US retirement system earns just a C+ in global study
US retirement system grade on par with Kazakhstan and Colombia
In a new ranking of global retirement systems, the U.S. notched a C+ grade that puts it on par with nations like Kazakhstan, Colombia, Spain and France.
The new Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index, released Tuesday, rates retirement income systems across the world by using the weighted averages of adequacy, sustainability and integrity.
The C+ rating means that America’s retirement system“has some good features but also has major risks and/or shortcomings that should be addressed; without these improvements, its efficacy and/or long-term sustainability can be questioned,” according to the study.
The U.S. scored 63 out of 100 possible points, coming in 22nd place out of the 47 countries examined.
“Retirement savings coverage and institutional quality retirement vehicles remain out of reach for many Americans, creating a significant adequacy gap that needs to be addressed,” Katie Hockenmaier, partner and U.S. defined contribution research director at Mercer, said in a statement.
A couple reviews their retirement plan at their home. (IStock / iStock)
The three most common sources of retirement income in the U.S. are Social Security benefits, employee pensions and personal savings – a trio dubbed the “three-legged stool” by financial planners.
Not every worker has access to a retirement-savings plan through work. More than half of Americans did not qualify for a retirement plan through their job, according to a recent study by the Economic Innovation Group.
Social Security only replaces about 40% of pre-retirement income for the average worker when they retire, meaning there are often significant financial gaps.
The entitlement program also faces long-term solvency issues, with the latest findings indicating that it could begin running out of money as soon as 2033.
A Social Security card sits alongside checks from the U.S. Treasury on Oct. 14, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images / Getty Images)
Unless major changes are made before 2034 to shore up the trust fund, more than 66 million Americans would see a benefit reduction between about 23% to 25%.
The Mercer study said that the U.S. could improve its retirement system by raising the minimum Social Security payment for low-income retirees, improving the vesting benefits for individuals with retirement-savings accounts and reducing “pre-retirement leakage” by making it more difficult to access those funds before retirement.
Only four countries – the Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland and Israel – scored an A grade, which means they have a “first-class and robust retirement income system that delivers good benefits, is sustainable and has a high level of integrity.”
There is a lot of data in the Report. But the most important set of numbers can be found in Table VI.G9.
As you can see from this chart, these numbers show the amount of revenue coming into the program each year, adjusted for inflation, as well as the amount of yearly spending. Both are rising rapidly.
Since the orange line (spending) is climbing faster than the blue line (revenue), the obvious takeaway is that Social Security has a deficit.
But that would be an understatement.
As you can see from the second chart, the cumulative deficit over the next 77 years is more than $60 trillion.
You’ll notice, of course, that I added a bit of editorializing to both charts.
Medicaid and Medicare are the biggest problems, but let’s focus today on Social Security.
Richard Rahn has a column in the Washington Times that summarizes the program’s grim outlook. Here are some excerpts.
Politicians love to talk about the Social Security “trust fund” and assure us that it will not be raided. But the unfortunate fact is the “trust fund” is an accounting fiction without any real assets. In actuality, Social Security is a giant Ponzi scheme operated by the government. Benefits that are paid to existing retirees come from the current taxes from those working today and borrowing. …But now, Americans have fewer children, and life expectancies are growing rapidly. …There is no easy way out. Future Social Security benefits will be cut (probably by not fully indexing for inflation), and/or taxes will be greatly and continuously increased until the system collapses.
The fact that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme isn’t necessarily fatal. After all, the government has the ability to coerce new workers into the system.
The problem is that there are fewer and fewer of those new workers to support the growing number of people getting benefits.
Here are the numbers from Richard’s column. As the old saying goes, read ’em and weep.
Richard ends his column by fretting that the United States is on a dangerous path.
The world has seen this play before. In 1906, Argentina on a per-capita income basis was one of the richest countries in the world, rivaling the United States. It has bountiful agricultural and mineral resources and had a relatively well-educated population of mainly European origin. But after a century of fascist/socialist/welfare-state governments, it is now a poor country. Venezuela went from a rich country with civil liberties to a poor oppressed country in only two decades. As Margaret Thatcher famously said, “the problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other peoples’ money.” The Greeks built a nice welfare state, largely using German taxpayers’ money – the Euro – until the Germans said, “no more.” As a result, the Greeks have seen a drop in real incomes of more than 30 percent in seven or so years.
The good news is that our economic policy won’t be nearly as bad as Argentina and Venezuela, even if some of Biden’s crazy ideas – such a massive per-child handouts – are enacted.
The bad news is that we could become a lot more like Greece.
And that’s where Margaret Thatcher’s famous warning could become an American reality.
There is a solution to this problem, by the way. It’s been implemented in a couple of dozen nations around the world.
P.S. Here are a couple of humorous items about Social Security.
The first one actually understates how bad the trade is because workers actually pay 12.4 percent of their income into the program (the so-called employer share simply means lower pre-tax pay).
And the second item points out that Bernie Madoff was an amateur.
P.P.S. If you want more jokes and cartoons about Social Security, click here. There are other Social Security cartoonshere,here, andhere. And a Social Security jokeif you appreciate grim humor.
Back in 2009 and 2010, when I had less gray hair, I narrated a four-part series on the economic burden of government spending.
Here’s Part II, which discusses the theoretical reasons why big government reduces prosperity.
I provide eight examples to illustrate how and why government spending can hinder economic growth.
The last item is what I called the “stagnation cost,” which is the tendency of politicians and bureaucrats to throw good money after badbecause there is no incentive to adapt.
When giving speeches, I usually refer to this as the “inertia cost.”
But, regardless of what I call it, I explain that every government program has a group of beneficiaries that are strongly motivated to keep their gravy train moving even if money is being wasted.
In an article for National Review, Sean-Michael Pigeon offers one very plausible explanation for why this happens.
He says politicians fall victim to the fallacy of sunk costs.
…we need an understanding of government inefficiency… One reason government spending is so needlessly costly is somewhat paradoxical: The state is wasteful precisely because people are so concerned about wasting money. …This is a classic sunk-cost fallacy: Costs that can’t be recovered are “sunk,” and therefore irrelevant for future decision-making.But while this fallacy is well known in economics, sunk costs are a big deal in the practical world of politics. Nobody wants to waste money, and politicians don’t want to cause waste directly. No member of Congress wants to be publicly responsible for a half-built bridge, especially when they have to tell taxpayers they still have to foot the bill for it. …Congress’s unwillingness to cut the funding of poorly run projects is a significant reason government projects always spend too much. …Politicians are nervous about cutting ongoing projects because they don’t want to leave taxpayers empty-handed, but stomaching sunk costs is worth it. Not only is it economically sound to stop government agencies from bleeding money, but it also sets the precedent that shoddy work will be held accountable. …to save money, sometimes you have to lose money.
In other words, it would be good to stop the bleeding.
But that’s not politically easy. Mr. Pigeon has examples in his column, but he should have included California’s (supposed) high-speed rail project.
That boondoggle has been draining money from state and federal coffers for about a decade. Cost estimates have exploded (something that almost always happens with government projects), yet construction has barely started.
And you won’t be surprised that a big argument from supporters is that we’ve already wasted billions and billions of dollars on the project, so therefore we should continue to waste even more money(sort of like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer because it feels good when you stop).
The big-picture bottom line is that the burden of federal spending should be reduced so that politicians have less ability to waste money.
Simply stated, modest-sized welfare states are sustainable if more and more new taxpayers enter the system to finance benefits for a burgeoning population of old people.
But that’s not happening any more. In most nations, traditional population pyramids are becoming population cylinders because of falling birthrates and increasing longevity.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that there is growing awareness the demographic changes are happening. Indeed, Damien Cave, Emma Bubola and Choe Sang-Hun have a big article on population decline in the New York Times.
All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore. Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.…Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time. …The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old. …The change may take decades, but once it starts, decline (just like growth) spirals exponentially. With fewer births, fewer girls grow up to have children, and if they have smaller families than their parents did — which is happening in dozens of countries — the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff. …according to projections by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, 183 countries and territories — out of 195 — will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100.
Plenty of interesting data, though remarkably little focus on the fiscal implications. Sort of like writing about 1943 France with almost no reference to World War II.
In any event, the article takes a closer look at the challenges in certain nations., including South Korea.
To goose the birthrate, the government has handed out baby bonuses. It increased child allowances and medical subsidies for fertility treatments and pregnancy. Health officials have showered newborns with gifts of beef, baby clothes and toys. The government is also building kindergartens and day care centers by the hundreds. In Seoul, every bus and subway car has pink seats reserved for pregnant women. But this month, Deputy Prime Minister Hong Nam-ki admitted that the government — which has spent more than $178 billion over the past 15 years encouraging women to have more babies — was not making enough progress.
I was struck by the statement from the Deputy Prime Minister that his nation “was not making enough progress”?
That’s a strange way of describing catastrophic decline in birthrates, as noted in the article.
South Korea’s fertility rate dropped to a record low of 0.92 in 2019 — less than one child per woman, the lowest rate in the developed world. Every month for the past 59 months, the total number of babies born in the country has dropped to a record depth.
Both Singapore and Hong Kong have extremely low birth rates, for instance, but they aren’t facing a huge fiscal crisis because they have very small welfare states and workers are obliged to save for their own retirement.
Other Asian jurisdictions, however, made the mistake of copying Western nations, meaning entitlement programs that become mathematically impossible when populations pyramids become population cylinders (or even upside-down pyramids!).
In addition to South Korea, Japan also faces a major challenge.
And the situation is very grim in Europe, even though birth rates haven’t fallen to the same degree (though the numbers is some Eastern European nations are staggeringly bad).
If you want a rigorous explanation of the issue, my colleague Jeff Miron has a must-read monograph on the topic. You should peruse the entire study, but here’s the key conclusion if you’re pressed for time.
…this paper projects fiscal imbalance as of every year between 1965 and 2014, using data-supported assumptions about gross domestic product (GDP) growth, revenue, and trends in mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs. The projections reveal that the United States has faced a growing fiscal imbalance since the early 1970s, largely as a consequence of continuous growth in mandatory spending. As of 2014, the fiscal imbalance stands at $117.9 trillion, with few signs of future improvement even if GDP growth accelerates or tax revenues increase relative to historic norms. Thus the only viable way to restore fiscal balance is to scale back mandatory spending policies, particularly on large health care programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Jeff’s report is filled with sobering charts. I’ve picked out three that deserve special attention.
First, here’s a look back in history at the growing fiscal burden of entitlement programs.
Second, here’s a look forward at how the fiscal burden of entitlement programs will get even worse in coming decades.
Keep in mind, by the way, that the two above charts only show the fiscal burden of entitlement programs (sometimes referred to as “mandatory spending” since the laws “mandate” that money be given to anyone who is “entitled” based on various criteria).
Jeff adds everything together and shows, for each year between 1965 and 2014, the “present value” of the gap between what the government is promising to spend and how much revenue it is projected to collect.
These numbers are especially horrific because “present value” is a measure of how much money the government would have to somehow obtain and set aside in order to have a nest egg capable of offsetting future deficits.
Needless to say, the federal government did not have access to $118 trillion (yes, trillion with a “t”) in 2014. And if there were updated numbers for 2015 and 2016 (which would probably be even higher than $118 trillion), the federal government still wouldn’t have access to that amount of money either.
Especially since the total annual output of the American economy is about $18 trillion.
So now you can understand why international bureaucracies like the IMF, BIS, and OECD estimate that the fiscal challenge in the United States may be even bigger than the problems in decrepit welfare states such as France and Italy.
Let’s get another perspective on the issue. James Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center warns about the scope of the problem.
Despite what presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have been saying on the campaign trail, the need to reform the nation’s major entitlement programs cannot be wished away. The primary cause of the nation’s fiscal problems, now and in the future, is the rapid rise in entitlement spending. In 1970, spending on Social Security and the major health care entitlement programs was 3.6 percent of GDP. In 2015, spending on these programs was 10.3 percent of GDP. By 2040, CBO expects spending on these programs to reach 14.2 percent of GDP. …entitlement reform is needed to put the federal government’s finances on a more stable foundation.
He outlines his preferred reforms, some of which I heartily embrace and some of what I think are too timid, but the key point is that he succinctly explains the need to act soon to avoid a giant long-term problem.
…reforms are not intended to create budgetary balance in the short-run. Large-scale change cannot be implemented in the major programs without significant transition periods, which means the reforms need to be enacted soon to reduce costs in fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five years. Skeptics may say it’s pointless to worry about fiscal problems that are more than twenty years off. They’re wrong. …The result is a misallocation of resources that undermines long-term economic growth. …Entitlement reform is an absolute necessity, as will soon become evident to everyone, one way or another.
The recent testimony by Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute also is must reading.
In just two generations, the government…has effectively become an entitlements machine. …transfers have become a major component in the family budget of the average American household-and our dependence on these government transfers continues to rise. …Fifty years into our great social experiment of massive expansion of entitlement programs, there is ample evidence to indicate that the unintended consequences of this reconfigutation of American political and economic life have been major and adverse.
You should read the entire testimony, which is a comprehensive explanation of how entitlements are eroding American exceptionalism.
All I can say for sure is that this combination never was, is not now, and never will be a recipe for national success.
Let’s conclude with some sage observations by George Melloan of theWall Street Journal. He summarizes the problem as being a combination of too much spending and too little political courage. Here’s the too-much-spending part.
…we seem richer than we actually are because we have borrowed so heavily from future generations. …the nation’s slow growth and rising debt are already reducing the opportunities for upward mobility. …Recent projections of the future cost of current government obligations certainly won’t relieve…people’s worries. Those promises have expanded far beyond any reasonable projection of the government’s ability to extract enough revenue to cover them. …The Congressional Budget Office projects a steady rise in “mandatory” (i.e., entitlement) costs as a share of GDP out into the distant future. …The upshot: Americans are deep in debt, mainly thanks to government excesses.
And here’s the too-little-political-courage part.
The only real answer is that the entitlement programs will have to be reformed, and sooner better than later, because the longer reform is postponed the greater the fiscal imbalance will become and the greater its drain will be… Donald Trump is out to lunch on this issue, as he is on most questions that require more than a fatuous sound-bite answer. As for Hillary…, forget about it.
Sigh, how depressing. It seems like America will be “Europeanized.”
For additional background on the issue of debt, unfunded liabilities, and present value, this video is a great tutorial.
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Late last year, I praised lawmakers in Georgia and North Carolina for being fiscally responsible.
The burden of government spending in those states was constrained between 2020 and 2022, even though that was a period when handouts from Washington were leading other states to squander money recklessly.
To be more specific, the Hawkeye state is pursuing good tax policy and good spending policy, and that superior combination recently led the Wall Street Journalto opine on Iowa’s success.
Kim Reynolds…has made her state a model of good tax policy… Iowa wrapped up its fiscal year with a surplus of $1.83 billion. …the third surplus in a row in the Governor’s tenure. These results have followed significant tax cuts that have helped the state’s economy. …The top rate has dropped to 6% from 8.53% since 2022, and it is scheduled to drop to a flat 3.9% rate by 2026. Iowa’s top corporate tax rate next year will drop to 7.1% from 9.8% in 2022, and it is scheduled to fall to 5.5% if the state keeps hitting its revenue targets. …Crucially, state spending has grown modestly since 2021… Now the Governor wants to raise her bet on this winning formula. “My goal is to get to zero individual income-tax rate by the end of this second term” in 2027, she said. …The Iowa tax experience belies the claims of the left that cutting taxes produces deficits. In Iowa the tax cuts have helped to produce record surpluses that then can be used to cut income-tax rates further.
The most important part of the above excerpt is “state spending has grown modestly since 2021.”
Was Iowa as prudent as Georgia and North Carolina between 2020 and 2022? Not quite, but data from the National Association of State Budget Officers shows that Iowa easily beat the national average.
And it appears that Iowa will do even better when there is final data for 2023 and 2024.
John Hendrickson of the Iowans for Tax Relief Foundation recently wrote that, “During this past legislative session, the legislature enacted an $8.5 billion budget for fiscal year 2024… This was only a slight increase from the $8.2 billion fiscal year 2023 budget.” And six months ago he and Vance Ginn notedthat, “The $8.2 billion budget for fiscal year 2023 represented a mere 1 percent increase from the prior year.”
The moral of the story is Governor Reynolds has the right formula. Because she has been restraining spending, it has been feasible to enact pro-growth tax reform. And because of continuing spending restraint, her goal of having no state income tax is very achievable.
I enjoyed this article below because it demonstrates that the Laffer Curve has been working for almost 100 years now when it is put to the test in the USA. I actually got to hear Arthur Laffer speak in person in 1981 and he told us in advance what was going to happen the 1980’s and it all came about as he said it would when Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts took place. I wish we would lower taxes now instead of looking for more revenue through raised taxes. We have to grow the economy:
Mitt Romney repeatedly said last night that he would not allow tax cuts to add to the deficit. He repeatedly said it because over and over again Obama blathered the liberal talking point that cutting taxes necessarily increased deficits.
Romney’s exact words: “I want to underline that — no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”
The fact of the matter is that we can go back to Calvin Coolidge who said very nearly THE EXACT SAME THING to his treasury secretary: he too would not allow any tax cuts that added to the debt. Andrew Mellon – quite possibly the most brilliant economic mind of his day – did a great deal of research and determined what he believed was the best tax rate. And the Coolidge administration DID cut income taxes and MASSIVELY increased revenues. Coolidge and Mellon cut the income tax rate 67.12 percent (from 73 to 24 percent); and revenues not only did not go down, but they went UP by at least 42.86 percent (from $700 billion to over $1 billion).
That’s something called a documented fact. But that wasn’t all that happened: another incredible thing was that the taxes and percentage of taxes paid actually went UP for the rich. Because as they were allowed to keep more of the profits that they earned by investing in successful business, they significantly increased their investments and therefore paid more in taxes than they otherwise would have had they continued sheltering their money to protect themselves from the higher tax rates. Liberals ignore reality, but it is simply true. It is a fact. It happened.
Then FDR came along and raised the tax rates again and the opposite happened: we collected less and less revenue while the burden of taxation fell increasingly on the poor and middle class again. Which is exactly what Obama wants to do.
People don’t realize that John F. Kennedy, one of the greatest Democrat presidents, was a TAX CUTTERwho believed the conservative economic philosophy that cutting tax rates would in fact increase tax revenues. He too cut taxes, and he too increased tax revenues.
So we get to Ronald Reagan, who famously cut taxes. And again, we find that Reagan cut that godawful liberal tax rate during an incredibly godawful liberal-caused economic recession, and he increased tax revenue by 20.71 percent (with revenues increasing from $956 billion to $1.154 trillion). And again, the taxes were paid primarily by the rich:
“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”
So we get to George Bush and the Bush tax cuts that liberals and in particular Obama have just demonized up one side and demagogued down the other. And I can simply quote the New York Times AT the time:
WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.
A Jump in Corporate Payments On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.
Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.
Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”
The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.
And of course the New York Times, as reliable liberals, use the adjective whenever something good happens under conservative policies and whenever something bad happens under liberal policies: ”unexpected.” But it WASN’T ”unexpected.” It was EXACTLY what Republicans had said would happen and in fact it was exactly what HAD IN FACT HAPPENED every single time we’ve EVER cut income tax rates.
The truth is that conservative tax policy has a perfect track record: every single time it has ever been tried, we have INCREASED tax revenues while not only exploding economic activity and creating more jobs, but encouraging the wealthy to pay more in taxes as well. And liberals simply dishonestly refuse to acknowledge documented history.
Now let’s take a look at the utterly fallacious view that tax cuts in general create higher deficits.
Let’s take a trip back in time, starting with the 1920s. From Burton Folsom’s book, New Deal or Raw Deal?:
In 1921, President Harding asked the sixty-five-year-old [Andrew] Mellon to be secretary of the treasury; the national debt [resulting from WWI] had surpassed $20 billion and unemployment had reached 11.7 percent, one of the highest rates in U.S. history. Harding invited Mellon to tinker with tax rates to encourage investment without incurring more debt. Mellon studied the problem carefully; his solution was what is today called “supply side economics,” the idea of cutting taxes to stimulate investment. High income tax rates, Mellon argued, “inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw this capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities. . . . The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up, wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people” (page 128).
Mellon wrote, “It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower taxes.” And he compared the government setting tax rates on incomes to a businessman setting prices on products: “If a price is fixed too high, sales drop off and with them profits.”
And what happened?
“As secretary of the treasury, Mellon promoted, and Harding and Coolidge backed, a plan that eventually cut taxes on large incomes from 73 to 24 percent and on smaller incomes from 4 to 1/2 of 1 percent. These tax cuts helped produce an outpouring of economic development – from air conditioning to refrigerators to zippers, Scotch tape to radios and talking movies. Investors took more risks when they were allowed to keep more of their gains. President Coolidge, during his six years in office, averaged only 3.3 percent unemployment and 1 percent inflation – the lowest misery index of any president in the twentieth century.
Furthermore, Mellon was also vindicated in his astonishing predictions that cutting taxes across the board would generate more revenue. In the early 1920s, when the highest tax rate was 73 percent, the total income tax revenue to the U.S. government was a little over $700 million. In 1928 and 1929, when the top tax rate was slashed to 25 and 24 percent, the total revenue topped the $1 billion mark. Also remarkable, as Table 3 indicates, is that the burden of paying these taxes fell increasingly upon the wealthy” (page 129-130).
Now, that is incredible upon its face, but it becomes even more incredible when contrasted with FDR’s antibusiness and confiscatory tax policies, which both dramatically shrunk in terms of actual income tax revenues (from $1.096 billion in 1929 to $527 million in 1935), and dramatically shifted the tax burden to the backs of the poor by imposing huge new excise taxes (from $540 million in 1929 to $1.364 billion in 1935). See Table 1 on page 125 of New Deal or Raw Deal for that information.
FDR both collected far less taxes from the rich, while imposing a far more onerous tax burden upon the poor.
It is simply a matter of empirical fact that tax cuts create increased revenue, and that those [Democrats] who have refused to pay attention to that fact have ended up reducing government revenues even as they increased the burdens on the poorest whom they falsely claim to help.
Let’s move on to John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular Democrat presidents ever. Few realize that he was also a supply-side tax cutter.
“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”
– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference
“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964
“In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“It is no contradiction – the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today’s economy is to raise consumption by major reduction of individual income tax rates.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.
“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill
Which is to say that modern Democrats are essentially calling one of their greatest presidents a liar when they demonize tax cuts as a means of increasing government revenues.
So let’s move on to Ronald Reagan. Reagan had two major tax cutting policies implemented: the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, which was retroactive to 1981, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Did Reagan’s tax cuts decrease federal revenues? Hardly:
We find that 8 of the following 10 years there was a surplus of revenue from 1980, prior to the Reagan tax cuts. And, following the Tax Reform Act of 1986, there was a MASSIVE INCREASEof revenue.
So Reagan’s tax cuts increased revenue. But who paid the increased tax revenue? The poor? Opponents of the Reagan tax cuts argued that his policy was a giveaway to the rich (ever heard that one before?) because their tax payments would fall. But that was exactly wrong. In reality:
“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”
So Ronald Reagan a) collected more total revenue, b) collected more revenue from the rich, while c) reducing revenue collected by the bottom half of taxpayers, and d) generated an economic powerhouse that lasted – with only minor hiccups – for nearly three decades. Pretty good achievement considering that his predecessor was forced to describe his own economy as a “malaise,” suffering due to a “crisis of confidence.” Pretty good considering that President Jimmy Carter responded to a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering,“It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”
Reagan whipped inflation. Just as he whipped that malaise and that crisis of confidence.
Back in 2010, I put together a “Moocher Index” based on the percentage of non-poor people in each state getting government handouts.
Based on that back-of-the-envelope calculation, Vermont, Mississippi, and Maine were the biggest moocher states and Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona were the most self-reliant states.
Then, in 2013, I shared some data looking at the value of welfare benefits in each state, compared to both the median wage and to the federal poverty rate.
Sadly, those numbers showed it was more lucrative in many states (especially in the Northeast and Hawaii) to live off the government rather than work.
Today, let’s look at which states are the most generous with handouts. The Committee to Unleash Prosperity shared this table yesterday, which ranks states based on the level of per-capita spending on public welfare.
The folks at CTUP highlighted California and Florida. Since I usually do New York-vs-Florida and California-vs-Texas comparisons, I added a couple more numbers.
It’s not a perfect analogy since people presumably prefer cash to in-kind handouts, but the vertical bars basically represent living standards for any given level of income that is earned (on the horizontal axis).
Needless to say, there’s not much reason to earn more income when living standards don’t improve. May as well stay home and good off rather than work hard and produce.
This is why income redistribution is so destructive, not just to taxpayers, but also to the people who get trapped into dependency. Which is exactly the point made in this video.
Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.4 (1/7) – From Cradle to Grave President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for […]
Testing Milton Friedman – Preview Uploaded by FreeToChooseNetwork on Feb 21, 2012 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth. His work and ideas continue to make the world a better place. As part of Milton Friedman’s Century, a revival of the ideas featured in the landmark television series Free To Choose are being […]
Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth We got to cut these welfare programs before everyone stops working and wants to get the free stuff. The Bible says if you don’t work then you should not eat. It also says that churches should help the poor but it doesn’t say that the government should […]
Johan Norberg – Free or Equal – Free to Choose 30 years later 2/5 Published on Jun 10, 2012 by BasicEconomics In 1980 economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman inspired market reform in the West and revolutions in the East with his celebrated television series “Free To Choose.” Thirty years later, in this one-hour documentary, […]
I ran across this very interesting article about Milton Friedman from 2002: Friedman: Market offers poor better learningBy Tamara Henry, USA TODAY By Doug Mills, AP President Bush honors influential economist Milton Friedman for his 90th birthday earlier this month. About an economist Name:Milton FriedmanAge: 90Background: Winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for economic science; […]
Below is a discussion from Milton Friedman on Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. February 10, 1999 | Recorded on February 10, 1999 audio, video, and blogs » uncommon knowledge PRESIDENTIAL REPORT CARD: Milton Friedman on the State of the Union with guest Milton Friedman Milton Friedman, Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution and Nobel Laureate in […]
Milton Friedman came up with the idea of eliminating all welfare programs and putting in a negative income tax that would eliminate the welfare trap. However, our federal government just doesn’t listen to reason. Obama Ends Welfare Reform as We Know It, Calls for $12.7 Trillion in New Welfare Spending Robert Rector July 17, 2012 […]
December 06, 2011 03:54 PM Milton Friedman Explains The Negative Income Tax – 1968 0 comments By Gordonskene enlarge Milton Friedman and friends.DOWNLOADS: 36 PLAYS: 35 Embed The age-old question of Taxes. In the early 1960′s Economist Milton Friedman adopted an idea hatched in England in the 1950′s regarding a Negative Income Tax, to […]
In the last few years the number of people receiving Food Stamps has skyrocketed. President Obama has not cut any federal welfare programs but has increased them, and he has used class warfare over and over the last few months and according to him equality at the finish line is the equality that we should […]
Testing Milton Friedman – Preview Uploaded by FreeToChooseNetwork on Feb 21, 2012 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth. His work and ideas continue to make the world a better place. As part of Milton Friedman’s Century, a revival of the ideas featured in the landmark television series Free To Choose are being […]
Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race? Co-authored by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop)
Many pro-life leaders are furious at President Donald Trump’s harsh assessment of Florida’s anti-abortion heartbeat law in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Pictured: Trump speaks at the Pray Vote Stand Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel on Friday in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump is drawing fire from pro-life leaders for describing Florida’s heartbeat protections for the unborn as “terrible.”
“I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” Trump told NBC’s new “Meet the Press” host, Kristen Welker, in an interview that aired Sunday. The former president was referring to Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signing state legislation banning the abortions of babies after a heartbeat has been detected.
Georgia, Ohio, South Carolina, and Iowa all have passed similar laws, though Ohio’s and Iowa’s laws are held up in court. Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia have almost completely banned abortion with limited exceptions, such as for preserving the life of the mother.
And to the chagrin of top pro-life groups, Trump also would not say whether he would support protections for babies after 15 weeks of gestation, suggesting that he would seek solutions to the abortion debate that both Republicans and Democrats could embrace.
“What’s going to happen is, you’re going to come up with a number of weeks or months,” Trump said. “You’re going to come up with a number that’s going to make people happy.”
While Trump’s recent remarks have provoked concerns from pro-life groups that he does not support strong legislation protecting life, he has previously been heralded as the most pro-life president in American history—and he will always have the lasting legacy of appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.
Trump also made history as the first president to attend the national March for Life in person, for appointing a slew of pro-life federal judges throughout his four years as president, for signing an executive order protecting infants born alive through botched abortions, and for significantly cutting Planned Parenthood’s federal funding.
But his newest comments sparked a strong response from pro-life leaders.
“Laws protecting the unborn are not a ‘terrible mistake,’” Alliance Defending Freedom CEO and President Kristen Waggoner said Sunday. “They are the hallmark of a just and moral society. Governors who protect life should be applauded, not attacked. And while we’re at it, men can’t become women. This is also based on a simple biological reality and one necessary for a just and moral society.”
Live Action’s founder and president, Lila Rose, decried Trump’s remarks as “pathetic and unacceptable” in a Sunday post on social media.
“Trump is actively attacking the very pro-life laws made possible by Roe’s overturning. Heartbeat laws have saved thousands of babies,” she said. “But Trump wants to compromise on babies’ lives so pro-abort Dems ‘like him.’ Trump should not be the GOP nominee.”
The pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America called for “every single candidate” to be “clear on how they plan to” save “the lives of children and serving mothers in need.”
“It begins with focusing on the extremes of the other side, and ambition and common sense on our own,” SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said. “Anything later than a 15-week protection for babies in the womb (when science proves they can feel pain) as a national minimum standard makes no sense.”
CatholicVote President Brian Burch said that the former president’s remarks have “sparked concerns among Catholics over whether he is committed to leading on this issue in the way he did during his first term.”
“Pro-life Catholic voters helped deliver him the White House in 2016, and a record number of votes in 2020,” Burch warned. “He cannot expect to win again without these same voters. Any Republican presidential hopeful must draw a clear contrast to the extreme, taxpayer-funded, unlimited abortion agenda of [President] Joe Biden.”
Some, like American Principles Project’s Terry Schilling, pushed for conservatives to hold their fire and wait to hear what type of protections for the unborn that Trump supports.
“Let’s at least see what national limit he backs before the hysterical takes,” Schilling said in a tweet pointing out that Trump had appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.
Daily Wire host Michael Knowles similarly suggested that Trump has “been extremely pro-life (e.g., Dobbs, 1st POTUS to speak at March For Life)” and has “proved himself capable of winning at least 1 general election.”
“Doesn’t excuse bad answers, but actions speak louder than words,” Knowles said.
Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent pro-life activist and president and CEO of The Family Leader, argued that “when a leader doesn’t have convictions on the most basic right of all, the right to #life, this is what you get.”
“Ugh,” he continued. “The ‘let’s make a deal’ message isn’t a win for babies, and it won’t win the #POTUS.”
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh described Trump’s remark as “an awful answer from a moral perspective” and also “stupid politically.”
“You can’t win over Democrats by going squishy on this issue,” Walsh said. “Republicans have tried that brilliant strategy for decades and accomplished exactly nothing by it. Defend life clearly and powerfully and unequivocally. That’s the only way.”
Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal. His former vice president, Mike Pence, told The New York Times on Sunday: “Donald Trump continues to walk away from the pro-life legacy of our administration.”
“There’s no negotiating when it comes to the life of the unborn,” Pence said. “We will not rest, we will not relent, until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the nation.”
And DeSantis responded to Trump’s remarks in an interview Monday with Radio Iowa.
“Donald Trump may think it’s terrible. I think protecting babies with heartbeats is noble and just and I’m proud to have signed the heartbeat bill in Florida and I know Iowa has similar legislation,” the Florida governor said.
“I don’t know how you can even make the claim that you’re somehow pro-life if you’re criticizing states for enacting protections for babies that have heartbeats,” he added.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please emailletters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
Ben Shapiro Obliterates Every Pro-Abortion Argument
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 3 | Death by Someone’s Choice (2010)
Adrian Rogers: Innocent Blood [#1004] (Audio)
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History (20…
Abortion: What Is Your Verdict? – R.C. Sproul
John MacArthur Abortion and the Campaign for Immorality (Selected Scriptures)
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Arizona Dem gov nominee Katie Hobbs appears to support abortion up to birth
Hobbs accused her Republican opponent Kari Lake of misconstruing her position on late-term abortion, saying the procedure is ‘extremely rare’
Democratic Arizona gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, during a Sunday appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” appeared to suggest that she was in favor of no limits on abortion.
Host Major Garrett noted that her Republican opponent Kari Lake has labeled Hobbs as an “extremist” for her view on abortion. He asked Hobbs whether she supported the current 15-week ban in Arizona or would seek a higher limit as governor.
Hobbs, who currently serves as Arizona’s Secretary of State, said Lake had misconstrued her position and said late-term abortion is “extremely rare.”
FILE: Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs speaks at a roundtable event in Phoenix, Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
“If it’s being talked about, it’s because something has gone incredibly wrong in the pregnancy. A doctor’s not going to perform an abortion late in pregnancy just because somebody decided they want one. That is ridiculous,” Hobbs said before suggesting that Arizonans would have “government-mandated forced births that risk women’s lives” under a Kari Lake administration.
Asked what her administration’s week limit for abortion access would be, Hobbs evaded answering directly saying that abortion “is a very personal decision that belongs between a woman and her doctor.”
“The government and politicians don’t belong in that decision,” Hobbs said. “We need to let doctors perform the care that they are trained and take an oath to perform.”
“So, if an Arizona voter were to conclude from your previous answer that you do not favor any specific week limit on abortion, would they be correct?” Garrett asked.
Hobbs repeated her initial answer: “I support leaving the decision between a woman and her doctor and leaving politicians entirely out of it.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Hobbs’ campaign for comment.
Arizona gubernatorial candidates Katie Hobbs (D), left, and Kari Lake (R), right. (Reuters)
Arizona doctors stopped performing abortions late last month after a judge in Tucson ruled that prosecutors can enforce a law dating to 1864 that bans abortion unless it’s necessary to save a woman’s life. Arizona also has a law passed this year that bans abortion after 15 weeks, creating speculation about what’s allowed.
Democrats have seized on the ruling, which revived the issue ahead of next month’s midterm elections. Democratic lawmakers sent a letter on Tuesday asking Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to call a special session of the Legislature to repeal the 1864 abortion ban.
Lake has spoken positively of Arizona’s total ban on abortion, which she called “a great law that’s already on the books.” She has called abortion “the ultimate sin,” said abortion pills should be illegal and that she would sign a bill banning abortion as soon as fetal cardiac activity can be detected, usually around six weeks gestational age and before many women know they’re pregnant.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Bradford Betz is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to bradford.betz@fox.com and on Twitter: @Bradford_Betz.
Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.
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September 25, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? which can be found on You Tube. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.
Today I want to respond to your letter to me on July 9, 2021. Here it is below:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 9, 2021
Mr. Everette Hatcher III
Alexander, AR
Dear Mr. Hatcher,
Thank you for taking your time to share your thoughts on abortion. Hearing from passionate individuals like me inspires me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your letter
Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history. Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America. I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.
As we move forward to address the complex issues of our time, I encourage you to remain an active participant in helping write the next great chapter of the American story. We need your courage and dedication at this critical time, and we must meet this moment together as the United States of America. If we do that, I believe that our best days still lie ahead.
Sincerely
Joe Biden
Mr. President, my wife was born in JEFFERSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and Adrian Rogers tells a story about another lady that was born in that same hospital: “They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF?”
Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)
I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan, and in his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):
(both Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer mentioned Carl Sagan in their books and that prompted me to write Sagan and expose him to their views.
For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.
The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.
Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.
In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?
Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.
Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?
As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?
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End of Sagan Excerpt
When I was in high school the book and film series named WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? came out and it featured Doctor C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer and they looked at the issues of abortion, infanticide, and youth euthanasia and they looked at comments from such scholars as Peter Singer and James D. Watson.
C. Everett Koop pictured above and Peter Singer below
Peter Singer, an endowed chair at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, said, “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”
James D.Watson
In May 1973, James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate who discovered the double helix of DNA, granted an interview to Prism magazine, then a publication of the American Medical Association. Time later reported the interview to the general public, quoting Watson as having said, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”
Carl Sagan
On August 30, 1995 I mailed a letter to Carl Sagan that probably prompted this discussion on abortion and it enclosed a lengthy story from Adrian Rogers about an abortion case in Pine Bluff, Arkansas that almost became an infanticide case:
An excerpt from the Sunday morning message (11-6-83) by Adrian Rogers in Memphis, TN.
I want to tell you that secular humanism and so-called abortion rights are inseparably linked together. We have been taught that our bodies and our children are the products of the evolutionary process, and so therefore human life may not be all that valuable to begin with. We have come today to where it is legal and even considered to be a good thing to put little babies to death…15 million little babies put to death since 1973 because of this philosophy of Secular Humanism.
How did the court make that type of decision? You would think it would be so obvious. You can’t do that! You can’t kill little babies! Why? Because the Bible says! Friend, they don’t give a hoot what the Bible says! There used to be a time when they talked about what the Bible says because there was a time that we as a nation had a constitution that was based in the Judeo-Christian ethic, but today if we say “The Bible says” or “God says “Separation of Church and State. Don’t tell us what the Bible says or what God says. We will tell you what we think!” Therefore, they look at the situation and they decide if it is right or wrong purely on the humanistic philosophy that right and wrong are relative and the situation says what is right or what is wrong.
This little girl just 19 years old went into the doctor’s office and he examined her. He said, “We can take take of you.” He gave her an injection in her arm that was to cause her to go into labor and to get rid of that protoplasm, that feud, that little mass that was in her, but she wasn’t prepared for the sound she was about to hear. It was a little baby crying. That little baby weighed 13 ounces. His hand the size of my thumbnail. You know what the doctor did. The doctor put that little baby in a grocery sack and gave it to Maria’s two friends who were with her in that doctor office and Said, “It will stop making those noises after a while.”
(Adrian Rogers pictured above)
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
My wife was born in main hospital in Pine Bluff, Arkansas
They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF? The same life!!! Are you going to tell me that is not a baby? Are you going to tell me that if that baby had been put to death it would not have been murder? You will never convince me of that. What has happened to us in America? We have been sold a bill of goods by the Secular Humanists!
Carl Sagan was elected the HUMANIST OF THE YEAR in 1982 by the AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION
Carl Sagan asked, “Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?”
This message “A Christian Manifesto” was given in 1982 by the late Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer when he was age 70 at D. James Kennedy’s Corral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
Listen to this important message where Dr. Schaeffer says it is the duty of Christians to disobey the government when it comes in conflict with God’s laws. So many have misinterpreted Romans 13 to mean unconditional obedience to the state. When the state promotes an evil agenda and anti-Christian statues we must obey God rather than men. Acts
I use to watch James Kennedy preach from his TV pulpit with great delight in the 1980’s. Both of these men are gone to be with the Lord now. We need new Christian leaders to rise up in their stead.
To view Part 2 See Francis Schaeffer Lecture- Christian Manifesto Pt 2 of 2 video
The religious and political freedom’s we enjoy as Americans was based on the Bible and the legacy of the Reformation according to Francis Schaeffer. These freedoms will continue to diminish as we cast off the authority of Holy Scripture.
In public schools there is no other view of reality but that final reality is shaped by chance.
Likewise, public television gives us many things that we like culturally but so much of it is mere propaganda shaped by a humanistic world and life view.
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I was able to watch Francis Schaeffer deliver a speech on a book he wrote called “A Christian Manifesto” and I heard him in several interviews on it in 1981 and 1982. I listened with great interest since I also read that book over and over again. Below is a portion of one of Schaeffer’s talks on a crucial subject that is very important today too.
A great talk by Francis Schaeffer:A Christian Manifesto by Dr. Francis A. SchaefferThis address was delivered by the late Dr. Schaeffer in 1982 at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is based on one of his books, which bears the same title._________
Infanticide and youth enthansia ———So what we find then, is that the medical profession has largely changed — not all doctors. I’m sure there are doctors here in the audience who feel very, very differently, who feel indeed that human life is important and you wouldn’t take it, easily, wantonly. But, in general, we must say (and all you have to do is look at the TV programs), all you have to do is hear about the increased talk about allowing the Mongoloid child — the child with Down’s Syndrome — to starve to death if it’s born this way. Increasingly, we find on every side the medical profession has changed its views.
The view now is, “Is this life worth saving?”I look at you… You’re an older congregation than I am usually used to speaking to. You’d better think, because — this — means — you! It does not stop with abortion and infanticide. It stops at the question, “What about the old person? Is he worth hanging on to?” Should we, as they are doing in England in this awful organization, EXIT, teach older people to commit suicide? Should we help them get rid of them because they are an economic burden, a nuisance? I want to tell you, once you begin chipping away the medical profession…
The intrinsic value of the human life is founded upon the Judeo-Christian concept that man is unique because he is made in the image of God, and not because he is well, strong, a consumer, a sex object or any other thing. That is where whatever compassion this country has is, and certainly it is far from perfect and has never been perfect. Nor out of the Reformation has there been a Golden Age, but whatever compassion there has ever been, it is rooted in the fact that our culture knows that man is unique, is made in the image of God. Take it away, and I just say gently, the stopper is out of the bathtub for all human life.
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]
ABORTION – THE SILENT SCREAM 1 / Extended, High-Resolution Version (with permission from APF). Republished with Permission from Roy Tidwell of American Portrait Films as long as the following credits are shown: VHS/DVDs Available American Portrait Films Call 1-800-736-4567 http://www.amport.com The Hand of God-Selected Quotes from Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., Unjust laws exist. Shall we […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on April 16, 2011. First you will see my letter to him which was mailed around April 9th(although […]
ABORTION – THE SILENT SCREAM 1 / Extended, High-Resolution Version (with permission from APF). Republished with Permission from Roy Tidwell of American Portrait Films as long as the following credits are shown: VHS/DVDs Available American Portrait Films Call 1-800-736-4567 http://www.amport.com The Hand of God-Selected Quotes from Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., Unjust laws exist. Shall we […]
When I think of the things that make me sad concerning this country, the first thing that pops into my mind is our treatment of unborn children. Donald Trump is probably going to run for president of the United States. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council recently had a conversation with him concerning the […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
They promise better lives for workers, but they deliver deprivation and suffering.
They promise harmony, but the reality of socialists societies is division and discord.
One obvious conclusion is that communists are despicable people That’s true, and the people who give aid and comfort to communists also deserve scorn.
Another conclusion is that we should disbelieve anything communists say.
Based on the above examples, that would be an understandable conclusion.
But I have found a communist who is semi-truthful. His name is Kohei Saito and I trust him because he is telling people that his policies will lead to less prosperity.
Here are some excerpts from a New York Timesstory by Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno.
When Kohei Saito decided to write about “degrowth communism,” his editor was understandably skeptical. Communism is unpopular in Japan. …So a book arguing that Japan should view its current condition of population decline and economic stagnation not as a crisis, but as an opportunity for Marxist reinvention, sounded like a tough sell.But…Mr. Saito’s book “Capital in the Anthropocene” has sold more than 500,000 copies, exceeding his wildest imaginings. Mr. Saito, a philosophy professor at the University of Tokyo, appears regularly in Japanese media to discuss his ideas. …Mr. Saito said, …“there are too many cars, too many skyscrapers, too many convenience stores, too much fast fashion,”… Mr. Saito is not clear exactly what shape a world under degrowth communism would take, but he insists that it would be…focused on expanding communal resources.
It is safe to say that Mr. Saito is an immoral idiot.
But I have to give him credit for accidental honesty. Communism is very capable of delivering “degrowth.”
If Japan follows Saito’s advice, it is a sure bet that there will be fewer cars, fewer skyscrapers, fewer convenience stores, and less fashion.
By the way, in addition to being an immoral idiot, Mr. Saito is also a hypocrite (a common problem on the left).
Mr. Saito’s critics have called him out for castigating the capitalist system he himself has benefited from… He recently moved into a three-story home in an upscale neighborhood..
It’s unfortunate that the New York Times decided to devote attention to a crank like Saito, though I guess it is somewhat newsworthy that he has sold 500,000 books.
So I won’t criticize the authors for writing the story. But I can’t resist pointing out some economic illiteracy in their report. They write about supposed problems with capitalism, but the Japanese policies they cite – easy money and wasteful spending – are examples of statism.
Mr. Saito has tapped into what he describes as a growing disillusionment in Japan with capitalism’s ability to solve the problems people see around them… Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, has worked for years to promote economic growth… But there are strong indications that the country’s…policies of ultracheap money and big government spending are reaching their limits. The interventions have done little to stimulate growth.
Keynesian policies didn’t work? At the risk of being overly sarcastic, I’m shocked, shocked.
I’ll close with a few general observations about Japanese economic policy.
The good news is that post-war capitalism enabled Japan to become reasonably prosperous.
Mr Saito wants to accelerate his country’s decline. Hopefully Japanese policymakers will ignore his poisonous advice.
Communism catches the attention of the young at heart but it has always brought repression wherever it is tried (“Schaeffer Sundays” Part 1)
Francis Schaeffer is a hero of mine and I want to honor him with a series of posts on Sundays called “Schaeffer Sundays” which will include his writings and clips from his film series. I have posted many times in the past using his material.
Communism has never been tried is something I was told just a few months ago by a well meaning young person who was impressed with the ideas of Karl Marx. I responded that there are only 5 communist countries in the world today and they lack political, economic and religious freedom.
Communism has always failed because of its materialist base. Francis Schaeffer does a great job of showing that in this clip below. Also Schaeffer shows that there were lots of similar things about the basis for both the French and Russia revolutions and he exposes the materialist and humanist basis of both revolutions.
HowShouldWeThenLive Episode 5
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HowShouldweThenLive Episode 6
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Similarities between French Revolution and Communist Revolution
Schaeffer compares communism with French Revolution and Napoleon.
1. Lenin took charge in Russia much as Napoleon took charge in France – when people get desperate enough, they’ll take a dictator.
Other examples: Hitler, Julius Caesar. It could happen again.
2. Communism is very repressive, stifling political and artistic freedom. Even allies have to be coerced. (Poland).
Communists say repression is temporary until utopia can be reached – yet there is no evidence of progress in that direction. Dictatorship appears to be permanent.
3. No ultimate basis for morality (right and wrong) – materialist base of communism is just as humanistic as French. Only have “arbitrary absolutes” no final basis for right and wrong.
How is Christianity different from both French Revolution and Communism?
Contrast N.T. Christianity – very positive government reform and great strides against injustice. (especially under Wesleyan revival).
Bible gives absolutes – standards of right and wrong. It shows the problems and why they exist (man’s fall and rebellion against God).
Is Christianity at all like Communism?
Sometimes Communism sounds very “Christian” – desirable goals of equality, justice, etc. Schaeffer elsewhere explains by saying Marxism is a Christian heresy – Karl Marx
borrowed some of the ideals of N.T.
Below is a great article. Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
This article was published January 30, 2011 at 2:28 a.m. Here is a portion of that article below:
A final advantage is the mutation of socialism into so many variants over the past century or so. Precisely because Karl Marx was unclear as to how it would work in practice, socialism has always been something of an empty vessel into which would be revolutionaries seeking personal meaning and utopian causes to support can pour pretty much anything.
A desire to increase state power, soak the rich and expand the welfare state is about all that is left of the original vision. Socialism for young lefties these days means “social justice” and compassion for the poor, not the gulag and the NKVD.
In the end, the one argument that will never wash is that communismcan’t be said to have failed because it was never actually tried. This is a transparent intellectual dodge that ignores the fact that “people’s democracies” were established all over the place in the first three decades after World War II.
Such sophistry is resorted to only because communism in all of those places produced hell on earth rather than heaven.
That the attempts to build communism in a remarkable variety of different geographical regions led to only tyranny and mass bloodshed tells us only that it was never feasible in the first place, and that societies built on the socialist principle ironically suffer from the kind of “inner contradictions” that Marx mistakenly predicted would destroy capitalism.
Yes, all economies are mixed in nature, and one could plausibly argue that the socialist impulse took the rough edges off of capitalism by sponsoring the creation of welfare-state programs that command considerable public support.
But the fact remains that no society in history has been able to achieve sustained prosperity without respect for private property and market forces of supply and demand. Nations, therefore, retain their economic dynamism only to the extent that they resist the temptation to travel too far down the socialist road.
Just in case you didn’t realize, we’re “celebrating” an anniversary.
In 1917, at this time of year, the Bolshevik revolution was occurring in Russia. It resulted in the creation of the Soviet Union, followed in subsequent decades by enslavement of Eastern Europe and communist takeovers in a few other unfortunate nations.
This is a very evil and tragic anniversary, a milestone that merits sad reflection because communism is an evil ideology, and communist governments have butchered about 100 million people.
I’ve written about the horrors that communism has imposed on the people of Cambodia, Cuba, and North Korea, but let’s zoom out and look at this evil ideology from a macro perspective.
We’ll start with A. Barton Hinkle’s column in Reason.
…the Bolsheviks…seized power from the provisional government that had been installed in the final days of Russia’s Romanov dynasty. The revolution ushered in what would become a century of ghastly sadism. …it is hard even now to grasp the sheer scale of agony imposed by the brutal ideology of collectivism. …In 1997, a French publisher published “The Black Book of communism,” which tried to place a definitive figure on the number of people who died by communism’s hand: 65 million in China, 20 million in the Soviet Union, 2 million in Cambodia, 2 million in North Korea, and so on—more than 90 million lives, all told. …depravity was woven into the sinews of communism by its very nature. The history of the movement is a history of sadistic “struggle sessions” during the Cultural Revolution, of gulags and psychiatric wards in Russia, of the torture and murder of teachers, doctors, and other intellectuals in Cambodia, and on and on.
Here’s some of what Professor Ilya Somin wrote for the Washington Post.
May Day. Since 2007, I have defended the idea of using this date as an international Victims of Communism Day. …Our comparative neglect of communist crimes has serious costs. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other similar events help sensitize us to the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of left-wing forms of totalitarianism, and government control of the economy and civil society.
In an article for National Review, John O’Sullivan explains the tyrannical failure of communism.
Those evil deeds…include the forced famine in Ukraine that murdered millions in a particularly horrible fashion; starting the Second World War jointly with Hitler by agreeing in the Nazi–Soviet Pact to invade Poland and the Baltic states; the Gulag in which millions more perished; and much more. …The Communist experiment failed above all because it was Communist. …Economically, the Soviet Union was a massive failure 70 years later to the point where Gorbachev complained to the Politburo that it exported less annually than Singapore. …it is a fantasy that the USSR compensated for these failures by making greater social gains than liberal capitalism: Doctors had to be bribed; patients had to take bandages and medicines into hospital with them; homelessness in Moscow was reduced by an internal passport system that kept people out of the city; and so on.
We’re just scratching the surface.
As an economist, I focus on the material failure of communism and I’ve tried to make that very clear with comparisons of living standards over time in Cuba and Hong Kong as well as in North Korea and South Korea.
But the evil of communism goes well beyond poverty and deprivation. It also is an ideology of mass murder.
Which is why this tweet from the Russian government is morally offensive.
Yes, the Soviet Union helped defeat the National Socialists of Germany, but keep in mind that Stalin helped trigger the war by inking a secret agreement with Hitler to divide up Poland.
Moreover, the Soviet Union had its own version of the holocaust.
I don’t know who put together this video, but it captures the staggering human cost of communism.
Meanwhile, Dennis Prager lists 6 reasons why communism isn’t hated the same way Nazism is hated.
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The only thing I can add to these videos is that there has never been a benign communist regime.
Indeed, political repression and brutality seems to be the key difference between liberal socialism and Marxist socialism.
Let’s close with this chart from Mark Perry at the American Enterprise Institute.
All forms of totalitarianism are bad, oftentimes resulting in mass murder. As Dennis Prager noted in his video, both communism and Nazism are horrid ideologies. Yet for some bizarre reason, some so-called intellectuals still defendthe former.
Milton Friedman – Should Higher Education Be Subsidized? Published on Aug 14, 2013 Professor Friedman leads a roundtable discussion with students. http://www.LibertyPen.com Hillary Is Wrong: Subsidies for Higher Education Are the Problem, not the Solution August 24, 2016 by Dan Mitchell “So many bad ideas, so little time.” That’s my attitude about Hillary Clinton. She proposes […]
Milton Friedman on Medical Care (Full Lecture) Another Grim Reminder that Obamacare Has Made Healthcare More Expensive August 29, 2016 by Dan Mitchell Way back in 2009, some folks on the left shared a chart showing that national expenditures on healthcare compared to life expectancy. This comparison was not favorable to the United States, which easily […]
_ Milton Friedman – Should Higher Education Be Subsidized? Published on Aug 14, 2013 Professor Friedman leads a roundtable discussion with students. http://www.LibertyPen.com Hillary Is Wrong: Subsidies for Higher Education Are the Problem, not the Solution August 24, 2016 by Dan Mitchell “So many bad ideas, so little time.” That’s my attitude about Hillary Clinton. She […]
_ Milton Friedman on Medical Care (Full Lecture) Another Grim Reminder that Obamacare Has Made Healthcare More Expensive August 29, 2016 by Dan Mitchell Way back in 2009, some folks on the left shared a chart showing that national expenditures on healthcare compared to life expectancy. This comparison was not favorable to the United States, which […]
Milton Friedman and Dan Mitchell on the Post Office!!! Ep. 10 – How to Stay Free [3/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980) Pat Brennan became something of a celebrity in 1978 because she was delivering mail in competition with the United States Post Office. With her husband she set up business in a basement […]
Testing Milton Friedman: Free Markets – Full Video Hong Kong and the Miracle of Compounding Long-Run Growth March 11, 2016 by Dan Mitchell Hong Kong is a truly remarkable jurisdiction. Can you name, after all, another government in the world that brags about how little it spends on redistribution programs andhow few people are dependent on […]
Friedman & Sowell: Should Our School System Be Privatized? America’s Government School System: Never Have so Many Paid so Much to Achieve so Little March 20, 2015 by Dan Mitchell No other nation in the world spends as much on education as the United States. According to our leftist friends, who prefer to measure inputs rather […]
Friedman & Sowell: Should Our School System Be Privatized? What if the NFL Was Run Like the Government School System? October 4, 2011 by Dan Mitchell Regular readers know that the two things that get me most excited are the Georgia Bulldogs and the fight against a bloated public sector that is ineffective in the best […]
_ Friedman & Sowell: Should Our School System Be Privatized? Excellent Washington Post Editorial (Yes, Really) on School Choice September 3, 2013 by Dan Mitchell School choice should be a slam-dunk issue. There’s very powerful evidence that we can provide superior education for lower cost if we shift away from monopoly government schools to a system […]
Milton Friedman and Dan Mitchell on the Post Office!!! Ep. 10 – How to Stay Free [3/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980) Pat Brennan became something of a celebrity in 1978 because she was delivering mail in competition with the United States Post Office. With her husband she set up business in a basement […]
“We must not forget that we are talking about empowering partisan politicians such as state Secretaries of State to disqualify their political opponents from the ballot, depriving voters of the ability to elect candidates of their choice. If abused, this is profoundly anti-democratic.”
I’m delighted to be able to pass along this response by Prof. Michael McConnell (Stanford Law School) to a couple of items that were posted on the blog in the last few days:
There is a recent flurry of interest in Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which bars any person who has “engaged in” an “insurrection or rebellion” (after having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution) from holding state or federal office. This provision has played no significant role in American governance since 1872 and was regarded by many scholars as moribund. The revival of interest in Section 3 is sparked by scholarship by several scholars with impeccable conservative credentials, including my friends Will Baude, Michael Paulsen, and Steve Calabresi. See and Their work advocates a “broad, sweeping” interpretation of the disqualification provision, and claims that under Section 3, Donald Trump is ineligible to run for a second term, without any further process, hearings, or adjudications. Already it has drawn the attention of the New York Times, and presumably will fuel efforts to keep Trump off the ballot.
I have no truck with Trump, for whom I have low regard. But in the haste to disqualify Trump, we should be wary of too loose an interpretation of Section 3.
We must not forget that we are talking about empowering partisan politicians such as state Secretaries of State to disqualify their political opponents from the ballot, depriving voters of the ability to elect candidates of their choice. If abused, this is profoundly anti-democratic. “The right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government.” Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 555 (1964). The broader and more nebulous the definition of engaging in insurrection, and the fewer the procedural safeguards, the greater the danger.
Section 3 speaks of “insurrection” and “rebellion.” These are demanding terms, connoting only the most serious of uprisings against the government, such as the Whisky Rebellion and the Civil War. The terms of Section 3 should not be defined down to include mere riots or civil disturbances, which are common in United States history. Many of these riots impede the lawful operations of government, and exceed the power of normal law enforcement to control. Are they insurrections or rebellions, within the meaning of Section 3?
I have not done the historical work to speak with confidence, but I would hazard the suggestion that a riot is the use of violence to express anger or to attempt to coerce the government to take certain actions, while insurrections and rebellions are the use of violence, usually on a larger scale, to overthrow the government or prevent it from being able to govern.
Moreover, Section 3 uses the verb “engage in,” which connotes active involvement and not mere support or assistance. Significantly, Section 3 also uses the term “give aid and comfort to”—but this is reserved for giving aid and comfort to the “enemies” of the United States, which has historically meant enemies in war. Bas v. Tingy(1800). That Section 3 uses both terms, with different referents, strongly suggests that “engage in” means more than just give “aid and comfort” to an insurrection. Baude and Paulsen maintain that Section 3 “covers a broad range of conduct against the authority of the constitutional order, including many instances of indirect participation or support.” They explicitly state that Section 3 trumps the First Amendment. The terms “broad range of conduct” and “indirect support” are ominous, especially since they also say that Section 3 trumps the First Amendment and does not require due process. What could go wrong?
Putting together my friends’ broad definitions of “insurrection” and “engage,” and lack of concern about enforcement procedure, I worry that this approach could empower partisans to seek disqualification every time a politician supports or speaks in support of the objectives of a political riot. Imagine how bad actors will use this theory. If that is what Section 3 necessarily means, we have to live with it. But in my opinion, we should seek the narrowest, most precise, least susceptible to abuse, definition that is consistent with history and precedent. In the absence of actual engagement in actual insurrection, judged as such by competent authorities, we should allow the American people to vote for the candidates of their choice.
Congress has enacted a statute, 18 U.S.C § 2383, which covers participation in rebellion or insurrection, and which provides that those found guilty “shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.” This mode of enforcement has been enacted by the entity entrusted with responsibility to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment; it proceeds through the ordinary course of prosecution by the executive, trial by a court, decision by a jury, and appeal to appellate courts, with due process at every step. It is significant that the Department of Justice has prosecuted hundreds of persons for their involvement in the January 6 incursion at the Capitol, but has not charged anyone, including Trump, with insurrection under this or any other statute. It is not obvious that partisan officials in state governments, without specific authorization or checks and balances, should apply broad and uncertain definitions to decide who can run for office in a republic, when responsible officials with clear statutory and constitutional authority have not done so.
Note that the “friends” here isn’t just the lawyer conceit of referring to opposing counsel as “my friends”; I think McConnell and Calabresi, Baude, and Paulsen are indeed friends, and McConnell, Baude, and Paulsen are actually coauthors (together with our own Sam Bray) of a casebook on the Constitution. Baude also clerked for McConnell when McConnell was a Tenth Circuit judge (as did Bray). As you might gather, I’m always delighted to see—and, when possible, host—such substantive debates among friends and colleagues.
Why Are Some ‘Insurrections’ More Equal Than Others?
Protesters demanding gun controls storm the state Capitol building in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday. (Photo: Johnnie Izquierdo/The Washington Post/ Getty Images)
Democrats are just appalled that Republicans would dare call a “mostly peaceful” storming of a Capitol building an “insurrection.” Any comparison to what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, is just outrageous, they say.
Following a mass shooting by a transgender person at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, several protests erupted in Tennessee and other state Capitols.
When the protests in Nashville and elsewhere became not quite so peaceful, legacy media “fact-checkers” leaped into action. They twisted and turned to assure everyone that when left-wing activists take over a capitol, it’s totally different than if Donald Trump’s supporters do it.
Videos of protesters scuffling with police were quickly “contextualized” by our “objective” press to make sure your lying eyes didn’t deceive you.
It wasn’t just gun control activists in the fray. Pro-transgender demonstrators protested at, and in some cases stormed, many other state Capitol buildings. It has been truly amazing to witness, given the shooting just a few days earlier.
At this point, Democrats and their media allies really do just tell people the equivalent of “2+2=5” and fully expect Americans to buy it without question.
This isn’t necessarily new. What’s different, though, is that they now seem to think their institutional dominance is so complete that they don’t even have to pause for a moment before leaning into their message of choice. There isn’t a single story they can’t spin to fit their cause du jour.
And they don’t care one bit if you point out their hypocrisy, their double standards, their outright absurdities.
That the left-wing narrative-peddling machinewould use the Nashville shooting to immediately promote gun control was a given.
What’s notable and different about that shooting and its aftermath is the speed at which the shooter’s identity became the “mainstream” liberal cause to rally around.
In almost every instance, and no matter how tenuous, the identity of a victim is essential to left-wing messaging about how America is racist, sexist, or bigoted, and in need of transformational change to sweep away the stains of our national failings.
In this case, the victims’ identities were almost entirely erased. The shooter has been transformed into a casualty of the system.
“Every death is a tragedy, y’all. Seven lives,” one protester yelled in the Tennessee protest. There were seven people killed in the Nashville shooting—but only if you include the shooter.
The killing of six Christians—less than two weeks before Easter—was shoved out of the news in favor of the real story they wanted us to hear.
“As Tennessee was mourning those killed in a mass shooting at a Christian school this week, speculation about the killer’s gender identity was quickly weaponized in an ongoing battle against transgender and LGBTQ rights,” CBC News reported.
Some right-wing groups, media outlets, politicians and commentators quickly seized on the shooter’s gender identity, inflaming already contentious debates. …
There are fears the situation may get worse if the shooting is used as a catalyst to advance legislation seen as taking away the rights of transgender and other LGBTQ people.
Just like with the Black Lives Matter protests that in many cases turned violent, the media quickly concocted a justification for why invading our state Capitols is actually fine—this time.
Days after the shooting, this was what the Biden White House was talking about:
The White House also put out a “Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility,” saying that an “epidemic of violence against transgender women and girls, in particular women and girls of color, has taken lives far too soon.”
Much like the recent indictment of former President Trump, the way the two “insurrections” have been treated by the powers that be demonstrates that there is increasingly a two-tiered system developing in this country.
On one side, the institutions will aid you and come to your defense; on the other, they will be weaponized to punish you.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
The left praises democracy when elected but claims the right will destroy democracy when it loses. Pictured: Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discusses the 2016 election during her 2017 book tour. (Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers, NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Recently, Democrats have been despondent over President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border, and COVID-19 all have lost majority support.
As a result, the left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when it expects to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when it fears losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup.
A cynic might suggest that those on the left praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.
After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old 50-state union?
Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?
The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of former President Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?
Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?
The left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.
Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?
New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration new potentially lifesaving COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.”
The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?
In summer 2020, many local- and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity—if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.
Currently, the Biden administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.
The Biden administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border—in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.
The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.
Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S. citizens, but not millions of U.S. citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 “sanctuary city” jurisdictions. These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.
At various times in our nation’s history—1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63—America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.
In the last five years, we have indeed seen many internal threats to democracy.
Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent. She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump. She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about “Russian collusion.” Clinton urged Biden not to accept the 2020 result if he lost, and herself claimed Trump was not a legitimately elected president.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated laws governing the chain of command. Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander in chief. Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.
Some of the nation’s top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S. Congress, again, mostly with impunity.
All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.
The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.
We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle. But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish, one-day rioters on Jan. 6. Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property—all under the banner of revolutionary justice.
Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America’s institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.
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The Honorable Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Washington D.C.
Dear Representative Adam Kinzinger,
I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.
Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) joined his House Republican colleagues in a press conference urging Democratic leadership to allow a vote on the Born Alive protections. The proposal would protect babies who survive abortion and provide them with the same medical care that any other premature baby would receive. Yesterday, the Democrats blocked the proposed legislation—for the 17th time—from coming before the House for a vote.
Joining the Congressman and House Republican leaders at the press conference this morning was Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and pro-life advocate who has witnessed the devastating realities of these pro-abortion laws. The Illinois legislature is currently debating two abortion bills, similar to the extreme pro-abortion agendas in New York and Virginia.
It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:
Roger Kimball Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion
Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words:
That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.
Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”
There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.
Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.
From left: Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat, and Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
More
Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.
Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.
The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club.
Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively.
Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.
I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years.
Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building.
As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.
Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have beenbranded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.
Let me recommend that you read this letter below from Senator Ron Johnson and his colleagues:
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting information on the unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and those involved in the unrest during the spring and summer of 2020. The senators sent 18 questions to the attorney general on what steps the DOJ has taken to prosecute individuals who committed crimes during both events, and requested a response by June 21.
“Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the senators wrote. “This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.”
The full text of the letter can be found here and below.
June 7, 2021
The Honorable Merrick B. Garland
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Attorney General Garland:
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently dedicating enormous resources and manpower to investigating and prosecuting the criminals who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We fully support and appreciate the efforts by the DOJ and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners to hold those responsible fully accountable.
We join all Americans in the expectation that the DOJ’s response to the events of January 6 will result in rightful criminal prosecutions and accountability. As you are aware, the mission of the DOJ is, among other things, to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans. Today, we write to request information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States.
During the spring and summer of 2020, individuals used peaceful protests across the country to engage in rioting and other crimes that resulted in loss of life, injuries to law enforcement officers, and significant property damage.[1] A federal court house in Portland, Oregon, has been effectively under siege for months.[2] Property destruction stemming from the 2020 social justice protests throughout the country will reportedly result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims.[3]
In June 2020, the DOJ reportedly compiled the following information regarding last year’s unrest:
“One federal officer [was] killed, 147 federal officers [were] injured and 600 local officers [were] injured around the country during the protests, frequently from projectiles.”[4]
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “since the start of the unrest there has been 81 Federal Firearms License burglaries of an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms; 876 reported arsons; 76 explosive incidents; and 46 ATF arrests[.]”[5]
Despite these numerous examples of violence occurring during these protests, it appears that individuals charged with committing crimes at these events may benefit from infrequent prosecutions and minimal, if any, penalties. According to a recent article, “prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”[6]
DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. To date, DOJ has charged 510 individuals stemming from Capitol breach.[7] DOJ maintains and updates a webpage that lists the defendants charged with crimes committed at the Capitol. This database includes information such as the defendant’s name, charge(s), case number, case documents, location of arrest, case status, and informs readers when the entry was last updated.[8] No such database exists for alleged perpetrators of crimes associated with the spring and summer 2020 protests. It is unclear whether any defendants charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol breach have received deferred resolution agreements.
Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning. In order to assist Congress in conducting its oversight work, we respectfully request answers to the following questions by June 21, 2021:
Spring and Summer 2020 Unrest:
Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the unrest in the spring and summer of 2020? If so, how many times and for which locations/riots?
How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020 were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
How many individuals were incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement? What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
How many of these individuals were released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?[9]
How many DOJ prosecutors were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Breach:
Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the January 6, 2021 protests and Capitol breach? If so, how many times and how many additional arrests resulted from law enforcement utilizing geolocation information?
How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
How many individuals are incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement? What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
How many of these individuals have been released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?
How many DOJ prosecutors have been assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed:
Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.
________________
______________________
March 23, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too. Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.
___________________
The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.
Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland) when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have. Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.
Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION
_____________________________________
Dr. Francis schaeffer – from Part 5 of Whatever happened to human race?) Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto – Dr. Francis Schaeffer Lecture
Francis Schaeffer – A 700 Club Special! ~ Francis Schaeffer 1982
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – 1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaeffer
http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.
“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”
Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.
The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.
“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”
This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”
That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.
The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.
I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.
On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.
Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.
As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.
Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.
He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.
“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”
“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.
“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.
The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”
And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on.
______________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
But he also was a big proponent of industrial policy, and that the topic of today’s column.
In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Professor Jason Taylor explains the failure of President Franklin Roosevelt’s so-called National Industrial Recovery Act.
In June 1933 Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which required firms to meet with competitors and construct a “code of fair competition.” Over two years, 557 codes were implemented in industries ranging from steel to fishing tackle. …Businesses that were found violating the codes—say, charging a price below the code-specified one—could face hefty fines and imprisonment.…Predictably, the NIRA was a disaster. Companies responded to forced wage increases by scaling back employment. And colluding firms did what cartels generally do—they restricted output and raised prices. …manufacturing output rose an unprecedented 78% between March and July 1933, it fell sharply after the Blue Eagle’s arrival. By November two-thirds of the recovery gains were lost. …While it’s impossible to say exactly how the U.S. economy would have fared without the NIRA’s enactment, we do know one thing: The Great Depression would’ve been a lot less depressing. As he signed the NIRA, FDR said it was “the most important and far-reaching legislation ever enacted.” It was important, far-reaching and disastrous.
The moral of the story is that bad government policies caused the Great Depression, and FDRmade a bad situation far worse.
P.S. FDR also wanted an “Economic Bill of Rights” that would have created far-reaching entitlements to other people’s money.
Indeed, it’s more accurate to say that I’m despondent since the Prime Minister is abandoning (or is being pressured to abandon) key parts of her pro-growth agenda.
For details, check out this Bloombergreport, written by Julian Harris, about the (rapidly disappearing) tax-cutting agenda of the new British Prime Minister.
Westminster’s most hard-line advocates of free markets and lower taxes are looking on in despair as their agenda crumbles… When Liz Truss became prime minister just over five weeks ago, she promised to deliver a radical set of policies rooted in laissez-faire economics — an attempt to boost the UK‘s sluggish rate of growth. Yet her chancellor of the exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, faced a quick reality check when his mini-budget, packed with unfunded tax cuts and unaccompanied by independent forecasts, …triggered mayhem… Truss fired Kwarteng and replaced him with Jeremy Hunt as she was forced into a dramatic u-turn over her tax plans. …Truss conceded…and dropped her plan to freeze corporation tax. …Still, some believers are sticking by “Trussonomics”…Patrick Minford,..a professor at Cardiff University, said..“Liz Truss’s policies for growth are absolutely right, and to be thrown off them by a bit of market turbulence is insane.” …Eamonn Butler, co-founder of the Adam Smith Institute, similarly insisted that Truss “is not the source of the problem — she’s trying to cure the problem.”
Eamonn is right.
The United Kingdom faces serious economic challenges. But the problems are the result of bad government policies that already exist rather than the possibility of some future tax cuts.
In a column for the Telegraph, Allister Heath says the U.K.’s central bank deserves a big chunk of the blame.
Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have been doubly unlucky. While almost everybody else in Britain remained in denial, they correctly identified this absurd game for the con-trick that it truly was, warned that it was about to implode and pledged to replace it with a more honest system. Instead of a zombie economy based on rising asset prices and fake, debt-fuelled growth, their mission was to encourage Britain to produce more real goods and services, to work harder and invest more by reforming taxes and regulation.What happened next is dispiriting in the extreme. …Truss and her Chancellor moved too quickly and, paradoxically, given their warnings about the rottenness of the system, ended up pulling out the last block from the Jenga tower, sending all of the pieces tumbling down. …they didn’t crash the economy – it was about to come tumbling down anyway – but they had the misfortune of precipitating and accelerating the day of reckoning. …Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England…, has been deeply unimpressive in all of this, helping to keep interest rates too low… The idea, now accepted so widely, that the price of money must be kept extremely low and quantitative easing deployed at every opportunity has undermined every aspect of the economy and society. …Too few people realise how terribly the easy money, high tax, high regulation orthodoxy has failed.
Allister closes with some speculation about possible alternatives. If the Tories in the U.K. decide to reject so-called “free-market fundamentalism,” what’s their alternative?
He thinks the Labour Party will take control, and with very bad results. Jeremy Corbyn will not be in charge, but his economic policies will get enacted.
If Truss is destroyed, the alternative won’t even be social democracy: it will be Labour, the hard Left, the full gamut of punitive taxation, including of wealth and housing, and even more spending, culminating rapidly in economic oblivion.
That is an awful scenario. Basically turning the United Kingdom into Greece.
I want to take a different approach, though, and contemplate what will happen if the Conservative Party rejects the Truss approach and embraces big-government conservatism.
To be fair, they usually don’t try to claim their dirigiste policies will produce higher living standards. Instead, they blindly assert that it will be easier to win elections if Republicans abandon Reaganism.
Switching back to the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher repeatedly won election and her legacy was strong enough that voters then elected another Conservative.
The bottom line is that good policy can lead to good political outcomes, whereas bad policy generally leads to bad political outcomes.
P.S. To be sure, there were times when Reagan’s poll numbers were very bad. And the same is true for Thatcher. But because they pursued good policies, economic growth returned and they reaped political benefits. Sadly, it appears that Truss won’t have a chance to adopt good policy, so we will never know if she also would have benefited from a similar economic renaissance.
Ross Kaminsky of KHOW and I discussed how this is already happening.
I hate being right, but it’s always safe to predict that politicians and bureaucrats will embrace policies that give more power to government.
Especially when they are very anxious to stifle tax competition.
For decades, people in government have been upset that the tax cuts implemented by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatchertriggered a four-decade trend of lower tax rates and pro-growth tax reform.
That’s the reason Biden and his Treasury Secretary proposed a 15 percent minimum tax rate for businesses.
And it’s the reason they now want the rate to be even higher.
Though even I’m surprised that they’re already pushing for that outcome when the original pact hasn’t even been approved or implemented.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will press G20 counterparts this week for a global minimum corporate tax rate above the 15% floor agreed by 130 countries last week…the global minimum tax rate…is tied to the outcome of legislation to raise the U.S. minimum tax rate, a Treasury official said.The Biden administration has proposed doubling the U.S. minimum tax on corporations overseas intangible income to 21% along with a new companion “enforcement” tax that would deny deductions to companies for tax payments to countries that fail to adopt the new global minimum rate. The officials said several countries were pushing for a rate above 15%, along with the United States.
Other kleptocratic governments naturally want the same thing.
A G7 proposal for a global minimum tax rate of 15% is too low and a rate of at least 21% is needed, Argentina’s finance minister said on Monday, leading a push by some developing countries… “The 15% rate is way too low,” Argentine Finance Minister Martin Guzman told an online panel hosted by the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation. …”The minimum rate being proposed would not do much to countries in Africa…,” Mathew Gbonjubola, Nigeria’s tax policy director, told the same conference.
Needless to say, I’m not surprised that Argentina is on the wrong side.
And supporters of class warfare also are agitating for a higher minimum rate. Here are some excerpts from a column in the New York Times by Gabriel Zucman and Gus Wezerek.
In the decades after World War II, close to 50 percent of American companies’ earnings went to state and federal taxes. …it was a golden period. …President Biden should be applauded for trying to end the race to the bottom on corporate tax rates. But even if Congress approves the 15 percent global minimum corporate tax, it won’t be enough. …the Biden administration to give working families a real leg up, it should push Congress to enact a 25 percent minimum tax, which would bring in about $200 billion in additional revenue each year. …With a 25 percent minimum corporate tax, the Biden administration would begin to reverse decades of growing inequality. And it would encourage other countries to do the same, replacing a race to the bottom with a sprint to the top.
I can’t resist making two observations about this ideological screed.
Even the IMF and OECD agree that the so-called race to the bottom has not led to a decline in corporate tax revenues, even when measured as a share of economic output.
Since companies legally avoid rather than illegally evade taxes, the headline of the column is utterly dishonest – but it’s what we’ve learned to expect from the New York Times.
The only good thing about the Zucman-Wezerek column is that it includes this chart showing how corporate tax rates have dramatically declined since 1980.
P.S. For those interested, the horizontal line at the bottom is for Bermuda, though other jurisdictions (such as Monaco and the Cayman Islands) also deserve credit for having no corporate income taxes.
P.P.S. If you want to know why high corporate tax rates are misguided, click here. And if you want to know why Biden’s plan to raise the U.S. corporate tax rate is misguided, click here. Or here. Or here.
P.P.P.S. And if you want more information about why Biden’s global tax cartel is bad, click here, here, and here.
I enjoyed this article below because it demonstrates that the Laffer Curve has been working for almost 100 years now when it is put to the test in the USA. I actually got to hear Arthur Laffer speak in person in 1981 and he told us in advance what was going to happen the 1980’s and it all came about as he said it would when Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts took place. I wish we would lower taxes now instead of looking for more revenue through raised taxes. We have to grow the economy:
Mitt Romney repeatedly said last night that he would not allow tax cuts to add to the deficit. He repeatedly said it because over and over again Obama blathered the liberal talking point that cutting taxes necessarily increased deficits.
Romney’s exact words: “I want to underline that — no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”
The fact of the matter is that we can go back to Calvin Coolidge who said very nearly THE EXACT SAME THING to his treasury secretary: he too would not allow any tax cuts that added to the debt. Andrew Mellon – quite possibly the most brilliant economic mind of his day – did a great deal of research and determined what he believed was the best tax rate. And the Coolidge administration DID cut income taxes and MASSIVELY increased revenues. Coolidge and Mellon cut the income tax rate 67.12 percent (from 73 to 24 percent); and revenues not only did not go down, but they went UP by at least 42.86 percent (from $700 billion to over $1 billion).
That’s something called a documented fact. But that wasn’t all that happened: another incredible thing was that the taxes and percentage of taxes paid actually went UP for the rich. Because as they were allowed to keep more of the profits that they earned by investing in successful business, they significantly increased their investments and therefore paid more in taxes than they otherwise would have had they continued sheltering their money to protect themselves from the higher tax rates. Liberals ignore reality, but it is simply true. It is a fact. It happened.
Then FDR came along and raised the tax rates again and the opposite happened: we collected less and less revenue while the burden of taxation fell increasingly on the poor and middle class again. Which is exactly what Obama wants to do.
People don’t realize that John F. Kennedy, one of the greatest Democrat presidents, was a TAX CUTTERwho believed the conservative economic philosophy that cutting tax rates would in fact increase tax revenues. He too cut taxes, and he too increased tax revenues.
So we get to Ronald Reagan, who famously cut taxes. And again, we find that Reagan cut that godawful liberal tax rate during an incredibly godawful liberal-caused economic recession, and he increased tax revenue by 20.71 percent (with revenues increasing from $956 billion to $1.154 trillion). And again, the taxes were paid primarily by the rich:
“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”
So we get to George Bush and the Bush tax cuts that liberals and in particular Obama have just demonized up one side and demagogued down the other. And I can simply quote the New York Times AT the time:
WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.
A Jump in Corporate Payments On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.
Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.
Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”
The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.
And of course the New York Times, as reliable liberals, use the adjective whenever something good happens under conservative policies and whenever something bad happens under liberal policies: ”unexpected.” But it WASN’T ”unexpected.” It was EXACTLY what Republicans had said would happen and in fact it was exactly what HAD IN FACT HAPPENED every single time we’ve EVER cut income tax rates.
The truth is that conservative tax policy has a perfect track record: every single time it has ever been tried, we have INCREASED tax revenues while not only exploding economic activity and creating more jobs, but encouraging the wealthy to pay more in taxes as well. And liberals simply dishonestly refuse to acknowledge documented history.
Now let’s take a look at the utterly fallacious view that tax cuts in general create higher deficits.
Let’s take a trip back in time, starting with the 1920s. From Burton Folsom’s book, New Deal or Raw Deal?:
In 1921, President Harding asked the sixty-five-year-old [Andrew] Mellon to be secretary of the treasury; the national debt [resulting from WWI] had surpassed $20 billion and unemployment had reached 11.7 percent, one of the highest rates in U.S. history. Harding invited Mellon to tinker with tax rates to encourage investment without incurring more debt. Mellon studied the problem carefully; his solution was what is today called “supply side economics,” the idea of cutting taxes to stimulate investment. High income tax rates, Mellon argued, “inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw this capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities. . . . The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up, wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people” (page 128).
Mellon wrote, “It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower taxes.” And he compared the government setting tax rates on incomes to a businessman setting prices on products: “If a price is fixed too high, sales drop off and with them profits.”
And what happened?
“As secretary of the treasury, Mellon promoted, and Harding and Coolidge backed, a plan that eventually cut taxes on large incomes from 73 to 24 percent and on smaller incomes from 4 to 1/2 of 1 percent. These tax cuts helped produce an outpouring of economic development – from air conditioning to refrigerators to zippers, Scotch tape to radios and talking movies. Investors took more risks when they were allowed to keep more of their gains. President Coolidge, during his six years in office, averaged only 3.3 percent unemployment and 1 percent inflation – the lowest misery index of any president in the twentieth century.
Furthermore, Mellon was also vindicated in his astonishing predictions that cutting taxes across the board would generate more revenue. In the early 1920s, when the highest tax rate was 73 percent, the total income tax revenue to the U.S. government was a little over $700 million. In 1928 and 1929, when the top tax rate was slashed to 25 and 24 percent, the total revenue topped the $1 billion mark. Also remarkable, as Table 3 indicates, is that the burden of paying these taxes fell increasingly upon the wealthy” (page 129-130).
Now, that is incredible upon its face, but it becomes even more incredible when contrasted with FDR’s antibusiness and confiscatory tax policies, which both dramatically shrunk in terms of actual income tax revenues (from $1.096 billion in 1929 to $527 million in 1935), and dramatically shifted the tax burden to the backs of the poor by imposing huge new excise taxes (from $540 million in 1929 to $1.364 billion in 1935). See Table 1 on page 125 of New Deal or Raw Deal for that information.
FDR both collected far less taxes from the rich, while imposing a far more onerous tax burden upon the poor.
It is simply a matter of empirical fact that tax cuts create increased revenue, and that those [Democrats] who have refused to pay attention to that fact have ended up reducing government revenues even as they increased the burdens on the poorest whom they falsely claim to help.
Let’s move on to John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular Democrat presidents ever. Few realize that he was also a supply-side tax cutter.
“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”
– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference
“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964
“In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“It is no contradiction – the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today’s economy is to raise consumption by major reduction of individual income tax rates.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.
“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill
Which is to say that modern Democrats are essentially calling one of their greatest presidents a liar when they demonize tax cuts as a means of increasing government revenues.
So let’s move on to Ronald Reagan. Reagan had two major tax cutting policies implemented: the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, which was retroactive to 1981, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Did Reagan’s tax cuts decrease federal revenues? Hardly:
We find that 8 of the following 10 years there was a surplus of revenue from 1980, prior to the Reagan tax cuts. And, following the Tax Reform Act of 1986, there was a MASSIVE INCREASEof revenue.
So Reagan’s tax cuts increased revenue. But who paid the increased tax revenue? The poor? Opponents of the Reagan tax cuts argued that his policy was a giveaway to the rich (ever heard that one before?) because their tax payments would fall. But that was exactly wrong. In reality:
“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”
So Ronald Reagan a) collected more total revenue, b) collected more revenue from the rich, while c) reducing revenue collected by the bottom half of taxpayers, and d) generated an economic powerhouse that lasted – with only minor hiccups – for nearly three decades. Pretty good achievement considering that his predecessor was forced to describe his own economy as a “malaise,” suffering due to a “crisis of confidence.” Pretty good considering that President Jimmy Carter responded to a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering,“It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”
Reagan whipped inflation. Just as he whipped that malaise and that crisis of confidence.
Professional Golfer Amy Olson (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
Professional golfer Amy Olson captured a wave of media attention last month when she competed at the 2023 U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach while seven months pregnant with her first child. However, one story about Olson never made the news.
Steve Eubanks, a former senior writer at Global Golf Post and former managing editor of Global Golf Post+, told TheBlaze that he “resigned on the spot” when the executive editor and publisher insisted that his interview with Olson would only run “if we take out the abortion and the Christian stuff,” referring to the golfer’s comments about her faith and pro-life views.
According to Olson and Eubanks, the interview was ultimately withheld from publication on two separate occasions involving different media outlets.
What are the details?
Eubanks, an Atlanta-based author and columnist, was asked to write a preview story covering the U.S. Women’s Open, which was held at Pebble Beach in California this year for the first time. For the subject of his piece, Eubanks chose Olson, who would be competing in the July event while expecting her first child with husband Grant Olson.
The interview with the LPGA professionalcovered a wide range of topics, but Eubanks knew that one part of their conversation, in particular, would make the news.
When asked about the recent surge in media attention because of her decision to compete while pregnant, Olson pointed out the “irony” of the situation.
Olson: I’ve been honored that people have picked up the story and been interested. I feel like everyone has been supportive. Nothing but goodwill has come toward me, and I’ve so appreciated that.
I will say that the irony is not lost on me that, one year ago, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, I was playing in a major championship outside Washington, D.C., and women from around the world, and even on tour, were outraged. Now, a year later, people are celebrating that I’m going to be playing a major championship with an unborn child that they recognize as a life.
Even on Golf Channel, one of the hosts said that instead of 156, this year there will be 157 players in the field, recognizing that our child is a human being who will be out there with me.
That irony is not lost on me. I celebrate that our general humanity and common sense knows why this is something special.
Eubanks invited Olson to share how she navigated the media in June 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Olson: I had a number of private conversations and I made a public statement, which was the first public statement I’d ever made on something that was quote-unquote political, although I think it’s so much more than political. It’s really reductionist to call it a political issue.
Like anything, you have to handle it with compassion and truth. A lot of people had emotional reactions and really misunderstood, to an extent, what Dobbs did. I always tried to bring it back to what the court actually said. Yes, to an extent it was about life. But the court said, “Hey, we made the wrong decision in saying that courts should decide issues of abortion. This should be decided by elected officials who can be voted in and out of office.” So the court passed it back to state legislators, people who are accountable to the people.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue, things got terribly misrepresented, especially in the media where they often do. But for me it was certainly an interesting time.
When asked whether it is challenging being a Christian today, Olson opened up about her faith.
Olson: It’s very tough. Being a Christian has always been political because Christianity is supposed to touch every aspect of your life. I believe in comprehensive Christianity. It dictates how you treat people, how you think about the world, and the decisions that you make. There’s nothing in my life that isn’t affected by faith. To think that there is a realm out there not affected by my faith is something I can’t even fathom.
But over the last decade it’s become extremely difficult because a lot of the things that Christianity stands for have become political battlegrounds. Christ hasn’t changed His view on any of those things, but the culture has changed. So it’s a lot less acceptable to be an open Christian and to believe what Christianity has stood for the last 2,000 years.
Eubanks: Are you comfortable with the stands you’ve taken, even today as you say these things?
Olson: Absolutely, because, ultimately, I don’t stand before a human court. I stand before God. It’s why I do what I do and say what I say. Those around me will also have to stand before God, so if I ever say anything that is quote-unquote “offensive” I don’t do it to offend; I do it as a mission. Everyone stands before God in the end. I don’t want anyone to meet that moment unprepared.
I think the most unloving thing you can do is remain silent while someone you love and care about is walking down a path that is ultimately going to hurt them.
Eubanks told TheBlaze that when he filed the story with Global Golf Post’s editorial team, the staff “went ballistic.”
“About five hours into the editing process, I got calls from the editor saying, in his exact words, ‘The staff is going nuts. They’re saying we can’t run this,'” Eubanks said. “I was fighting very vociferously to get it run, saying, ‘It’s news; we’re a news outlet.’ And the point I wanted to make — if she had said exactly the opposite, I still would have fought to put it in.”
The piece was supposed to run the morning of the first day of the Women’s Open at Pebble Beach, he stated.
“Several back-and-forth phone calls took place on this, and finally, the editor in chief called and said, ‘The only way we will run this piece is if we take out the abortion and the Christian stuff,'” Eubanks continued. “That last line did it for me.”
After working at Global Golf Post since its launch 12 years ago, Eubanks “resigned on the spot.”
He noted that he would have understood pulling the story if the outlet had decided that the topic was too political for a sports publication.
“I would have fought like the devil to get it in, but it wouldn’t have been that big a deal,” Eubanks explained. “The last line showed me that not only were they anti-news, but they were decidedly anti-Christian. And I just couldn’t accept that.”
Eubanks’ interview with Olson never ran.
When contacted for a comment, Global Golf Post’s executive editor referred TheBlaze to the outlet’s founder and publisher, Jim Nugent. Nugent did not respond to a request for comment.
It doesn’t end there
While Olson was competing at the U.S. Women’s Open in early July, a writer with USA Today’s Golfweek picked up the story, Eubanks said.
The writer planned to publish a piece about “the interview that never ran,” he stated. Eubanks noted that Golfweek “spoke to Amy about what she’d said and interviewed me about my decision to resign.” To his knowledge, Golfweek’s article was written up and approved by its editorial team but was subsequently killed by editors at USA Today.
Eubanks and Olson told TheBlaze that Golfweek did not reach out to tell them why the story was not published.
Neither Golfweek nor USA Today responded to multiple requests for comment.
It is unclear why the story never ran.
Olson: ‘I lived through the outrage and also the celebration’
Olson told TheBlaze that she was excited for her interview to be published in Global Golf Post, noting that it was “an opportunity to share something about two experiences that I’d lived through.”
“Here’s been my experience in two major championships one year apart,” Olson stated. “One of them was complete outrage that a baby could have value while it’s still inside its mother’s womb. And then my second experience was playing Pebble Beach while seven months pregnant and the world celebrating the fact that there’s a life inside of me. And I lived through both of those. I lived through the outrage and also the celebration.”
“I wanted to comment on the irony of that,” she added.
Olson noted that Eubanks was not looking for her to comment on the topic but that she had brought it up herself while “trying to process the world that we’re living in right now” and was “shocked” when the story never ran.
“Then I think when I took a step back, I wasn’t quite as surprised when I thought about it a little bit more,” Olson remarked regarding the interview that was not published in Global Golf Post. “One of the things that stood out to me the most was just the fact that they had asked Steve to remove some of my specific comments, and then they would publish. And that is such a lack of journalistic integrity to remove certain aspects of a conversation, especially when it’s provided in transcript form.”
Olson was optimistic that her story would finally run when Golfweek reached out to her because she had always had positive experiences with that outlet in the past. She explained that when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the outlet had contacted her to share her opinion on the decision.
“There were other opinions shared because the article was basically just LPGA players’ reactions to Roe v. Wade being overturned,” she told TheBlaze. “To Golfweek’s credit, they had published comments of a conservative nature in the past, so honestly, I was really optimistic that they really wanted to get to the bottom of this and figure out why that other article got stopped.”
According to Olson, the day the Golfweek article was supposed to be published, it never ran.
“I didn’t fully understand why it didn’t get published,” Olson said regarding the Golfweek piece. “They didn’t know if it was because of my comments being Christian or conservative. They didn’t know if that was why it had gotten killed, and so they didn’t want to go forward with it being published. To me, it was a bit of a cop-out answer instead of really trying to get to the bottom of it.”
In the 10 years Olson has been playing professionally, she has never participated in an interview that did not get published, she noted.
“This is such an important issue,” Olson continued. “Not even necessarily the comments that I specifically made in the original article, but the fact that certain viewpoints are being censored. And it just makes me wonder, what other viewpoints are being censored?”
“I honestly just wanted to talk about my experience and make that public,” she added. “That was my intention and hope for people to be able to hear my two experiences that I’d lived through.”
The state of the media
Eubanks told TheBlaze that he has witnessed the political bias in the media become considerably worse, particularly within the last six to seven years.
He remarked that journalism is in a “sad state of affairs” and that he is “heartbroken to be in this position.”
“I don’t want this to sound like I’m trying to throw anybody under the bus or that I’m coming across as in any way bitter — I’m not,” he continued. “It’s just gotten to the point where the people who are in charge of these things don’t want to make waves. You have staffers who are going ballistic and who are kind of running the show. And so, you have an editor in chief and publisher who are saying — ‘Do I just let this story go or do I fight this battle with my staff going nuts?'”
Editorial teams at various media outlets are caving under the pressure from staffers to drop stories that go against the accepted narrative, Eubanks explained.
“Anyone who does not toe the left-leaning line now is shunned,” he added. “A lot of news that really should be out there is completely ignored because people have an agenda that they want to have out.”
Eubanks stated that many legacy media outlets have become “fan sites for their subscriber base” that provide viewers with “affirmation for their existing beliefs.”
“In sports, at least, which is my area of expertise, the leagues themselves are actually providing the most insightful and accurate coverage,” he said. “At the LPGA sites, the features and event coverage are the best in the business. The same is true for PGA.com and PGA magazine. Even sites like MLB.com get it right more often than the independent outlets ostensibly covering the sport.”
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Abortion: When Does Life Begin? – R.C. Sproul
Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race? Co-authored by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop)
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History (20…
Abortion: What Is Your Verdict? – R.C. Sproul
John MacArthur Abortion and the Campaign for Immorality (Selected Scriptures)
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Arizona Dem gov nominee Katie Hobbs appears to support abortion up to birth
Hobbs accused her Republican opponent Kari Lake of misconstruing her position on late-term abortion, saying the procedure is ‘extremely rare’
Democratic Arizona gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, during a Sunday appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” appeared to suggest that she was in favor of no limits on abortion.
Host Major Garrett noted that her Republican opponent Kari Lake has labeled Hobbs as an “extremist” for her view on abortion. He asked Hobbs whether she supported the current 15-week ban in Arizona or would seek a higher limit as governor.
Hobbs, who currently serves as Arizona’s Secretary of State, said Lake had misconstrued her position and said late-term abortion is “extremely rare.”
FILE: Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs speaks at a roundtable event in Phoenix, Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
“If it’s being talked about, it’s because something has gone incredibly wrong in the pregnancy. A doctor’s not going to perform an abortion late in pregnancy just because somebody decided they want one. That is ridiculous,” Hobbs said before suggesting that Arizonans would have “government-mandated forced births that risk women’s lives” under a Kari Lake administration.
Asked what her administration’s week limit for abortion access would be, Hobbs evaded answering directly saying that abortion “is a very personal decision that belongs between a woman and her doctor.”
“The government and politicians don’t belong in that decision,” Hobbs said. “We need to let doctors perform the care that they are trained and take an oath to perform.”
“So, if an Arizona voter were to conclude from your previous answer that you do not favor any specific week limit on abortion, would they be correct?” Garrett asked.
Hobbs repeated her initial answer: “I support leaving the decision between a woman and her doctor and leaving politicians entirely out of it.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Hobbs’ campaign for comment.
Arizona gubernatorial candidates Katie Hobbs (D), left, and Kari Lake (R), right. (Reuters)
Arizona doctors stopped performing abortions late last month after a judge in Tucson ruled that prosecutors can enforce a law dating to 1864 that bans abortion unless it’s necessary to save a woman’s life. Arizona also has a law passed this year that bans abortion after 15 weeks, creating speculation about what’s allowed.
Democrats have seized on the ruling, which revived the issue ahead of next month’s midterm elections. Democratic lawmakers sent a letter on Tuesday asking Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to call a special session of the Legislature to repeal the 1864 abortion ban.
Lake has spoken positively of Arizona’s total ban on abortion, which she called “a great law that’s already on the books.” She has called abortion “the ultimate sin,” said abortion pills should be illegal and that she would sign a bill banning abortion as soon as fetal cardiac activity can be detected, usually around six weeks gestational age and before many women know they’re pregnant.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Bradford Betz is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to bradford.betz@fox.com and on Twitter: @Bradford_Betz.
Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.
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September 25, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? which can be found on You Tube. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.
Today I want to respond to your letter to me on July 9, 2021. Here it is below:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 9, 2021
Mr. Everette Hatcher III
Alexander, AR
Dear Mr. Hatcher,
Thank you for taking your time to share your thoughts on abortion. Hearing from passionate individuals like me inspires me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your letter
Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history. Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America. I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.
As we move forward to address the complex issues of our time, I encourage you to remain an active participant in helping write the next great chapter of the American story. We need your courage and dedication at this critical time, and we must meet this moment together as the United States of America. If we do that, I believe that our best days still lie ahead.
Sincerely
Joe Biden
Mr. President, my wife was born in JEFFERSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and Adrian Rogers tells a story about another lady that was born in that same hospital: “They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF?”
Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)
I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan, and in his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):
(both Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer mentioned Carl Sagan in their books and that prompted me to write Sagan and expose him to their views.
For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.
The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.
Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.
In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?
Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.
Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?
As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?
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End of Sagan Excerpt
When I was in high school the book and film series named WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? came out and it featured Doctor C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer and they looked at the issues of abortion, infanticide, and youth euthanasia and they looked at comments from such scholars as Peter Singer and James D. Watson.
C. Everett Koop pictured above and Peter Singer below
Peter Singer, an endowed chair at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, said, “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”
James D.Watson
In May 1973, James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate who discovered the double helix of DNA, granted an interview to Prism magazine, then a publication of the American Medical Association. Time later reported the interview to the general public, quoting Watson as having said, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”
Carl Sagan
On August 30, 1995 I mailed a letter to Carl Sagan that probably prompted this discussion on abortion and it enclosed a lengthy story from Adrian Rogers about an abortion case in Pine Bluff, Arkansas that almost became an infanticide case:
An excerpt from the Sunday morning message (11-6-83) by Adrian Rogers in Memphis, TN.
I want to tell you that secular humanism and so-called abortion rights are inseparably linked together. We have been taught that our bodies and our children are the products of the evolutionary process, and so therefore human life may not be all that valuable to begin with. We have come today to where it is legal and even considered to be a good thing to put little babies to death…15 million little babies put to death since 1973 because of this philosophy of Secular Humanism.
How did the court make that type of decision? You would think it would be so obvious. You can’t do that! You can’t kill little babies! Why? Because the Bible says! Friend, they don’t give a hoot what the Bible says! There used to be a time when they talked about what the Bible says because there was a time that we as a nation had a constitution that was based in the Judeo-Christian ethic, but today if we say “The Bible says” or “God says “Separation of Church and State. Don’t tell us what the Bible says or what God says. We will tell you what we think!” Therefore, they look at the situation and they decide if it is right or wrong purely on the humanistic philosophy that right and wrong are relative and the situation says what is right or what is wrong.
This little girl just 19 years old went into the doctor’s office and he examined her. He said, “We can take take of you.” He gave her an injection in her arm that was to cause her to go into labor and to get rid of that protoplasm, that feud, that little mass that was in her, but she wasn’t prepared for the sound she was about to hear. It was a little baby crying. That little baby weighed 13 ounces. His hand the size of my thumbnail. You know what the doctor did. The doctor put that little baby in a grocery sack and gave it to Maria’s two friends who were with her in that doctor office and Said, “It will stop making those noises after a while.”
(Adrian Rogers pictured above)
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
My wife was born in main hospital in Pine Bluff, Arkansas
They took that grocery sack and Maria home and one hour passed and two hours passed and that baby was still crying and panting for his life in that grocery sack. They took that little baby down to the hospital there in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they called an obstetrician and he called a pediatrician and they called nurses and they began to work on that little baby. Today that baby is alive and well and healthy, that little mass of protoplasm. That little thing that wasn’t a human being is alive and well. I want to tell you they spent $150,000 to save the life of that baby. NOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THEY CAN SPEND $150,000 TO SAVE THE LIFE OF SOMETHING THAT SOMEBODY WAS PAYING ANOTHER DOCTOR TO TAKE THE LIFE OF? The same life!!! Are you going to tell me that is not a baby? Are you going to tell me that if that baby had been put to death it would not have been murder? You will never convince me of that. What has happened to us in America? We have been sold a bill of goods by the Secular Humanists!
Carl Sagan was elected the HUMANIST OF THE YEAR in 1982 by the AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION
Carl Sagan asked, “Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?”
This message “A Christian Manifesto” was given in 1982 by the late Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer when he was age 70 at D. James Kennedy’s Corral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
Listen to this important message where Dr. Schaeffer says it is the duty of Christians to disobey the government when it comes in conflict with God’s laws. So many have misinterpreted Romans 13 to mean unconditional obedience to the state. When the state promotes an evil agenda and anti-Christian statues we must obey God rather than men. Acts
I use to watch James Kennedy preach from his TV pulpit with great delight in the 1980’s. Both of these men are gone to be with the Lord now. We need new Christian leaders to rise up in their stead.
To view Part 2 See Francis Schaeffer Lecture- Christian Manifesto Pt 2 of 2 video
The religious and political freedom’s we enjoy as Americans was based on the Bible and the legacy of the Reformation according to Francis Schaeffer. These freedoms will continue to diminish as we cast off the authority of Holy Scripture.
In public schools there is no other view of reality but that final reality is shaped by chance.
Likewise, public television gives us many things that we like culturally but so much of it is mere propaganda shaped by a humanistic world and life view.
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I was able to watch Francis Schaeffer deliver a speech on a book he wrote called “A Christian Manifesto” and I heard him in several interviews on it in 1981 and 1982. I listened with great interest since I also read that book over and over again. Below is a portion of one of Schaeffer’s talks on a crucial subject that is very important today too.
A great talk by Francis Schaeffer:A Christian Manifesto by Dr. Francis A. SchaefferThis address was delivered by the late Dr. Schaeffer in 1982 at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is based on one of his books, which bears the same title._________
Infanticide and youth enthansia ———So what we find then, is that the medical profession has largely changed — not all doctors. I’m sure there are doctors here in the audience who feel very, very differently, who feel indeed that human life is important and you wouldn’t take it, easily, wantonly. But, in general, we must say (and all you have to do is look at the TV programs), all you have to do is hear about the increased talk about allowing the Mongoloid child — the child with Down’s Syndrome — to starve to death if it’s born this way. Increasingly, we find on every side the medical profession has changed its views.
The view now is, “Is this life worth saving?”I look at you… You’re an older congregation than I am usually used to speaking to. You’d better think, because — this — means — you! It does not stop with abortion and infanticide. It stops at the question, “What about the old person? Is he worth hanging on to?” Should we, as they are doing in England in this awful organization, EXIT, teach older people to commit suicide? Should we help them get rid of them because they are an economic burden, a nuisance? I want to tell you, once you begin chipping away the medical profession…
The intrinsic value of the human life is founded upon the Judeo-Christian concept that man is unique because he is made in the image of God, and not because he is well, strong, a consumer, a sex object or any other thing. That is where whatever compassion this country has is, and certainly it is far from perfect and has never been perfect. Nor out of the Reformation has there been a Golden Age, but whatever compassion there has ever been, it is rooted in the fact that our culture knows that man is unique, is made in the image of God. Take it away, and I just say gently, the stopper is out of the bathtub for all human life.
______________________________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]
ABORTION – THE SILENT SCREAM 1 / Extended, High-Resolution Version (with permission from APF). Republished with Permission from Roy Tidwell of American Portrait Films as long as the following credits are shown: VHS/DVDs Available American Portrait Films Call 1-800-736-4567 http://www.amport.com The Hand of God-Selected Quotes from Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., Unjust laws exist. Shall we […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on April 16, 2011. First you will see my letter to him which was mailed around April 9th(although […]
ABORTION – THE SILENT SCREAM 1 / Extended, High-Resolution Version (with permission from APF). Republished with Permission from Roy Tidwell of American Portrait Films as long as the following credits are shown: VHS/DVDs Available American Portrait Films Call 1-800-736-4567 http://www.amport.com The Hand of God-Selected Quotes from Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., Unjust laws exist. Shall we […]
When I think of the things that make me sad concerning this country, the first thing that pops into my mind is our treatment of unborn children. Donald Trump is probably going to run for president of the United States. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council recently had a conversation with him concerning the […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan said a bombshell 2011 note from then-Vice President Joe Biden to his son’s then-business partner, Devon Archer, is solid proof the current president has not been aboveboard in his denials on the matter.
On “The Story” Thursday, anchor Martha MacCallum read from the note, obtained by the New York Post, that Joe Biden said he regretted being unable to speak with Archer at an event where he was hosting then-Chinese President Hu Jintao.
“I apologize for not getting a chance to talk to you at the luncheon yesterday. I was having trouble getting away from hosting President Hu. I hope I get a chance to see you again soon with Hunter. I hope you enjoyed lunch. Thanks for coming,” the letter read.
Biden then reportedly included a handwritten footnote, “Happy you guys are together,” at the bottom of the letter, which was addressed to Hunter’s and Archer’s joint venture at an address on Wisconsin Avenue in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C.
A graphic from “The Story” shows an excerpt from a letter from Joe Biden to Devon Archer, obtained by the New York Post.(Fox News)
MacCallum reported that Archer and Hunter Biden were, at the time, trying to put together a business that dealt with government regulatory measures and were working to create a private equity fund.
Jordan said the letter is just the latest piece of evidence that the current president did indeed have knowledge of and “connections” with his son’s dealings.
“Remember, two and a half years ago, we had a former business partner, [Tony] Bobulinski, say that the email from the laptop … said ‘10% for the big guy,’” Jordan said.
“He says, ‘the big guy is Joe Biden.’ We have the piece of evidence you just talked about there – this note from 2011. We have the WhatsApp messages.”
Jordan added that Archer testified in last week’s closed-door congressional interview that Hunter Biden’s value in his business dealings was the Biden “brand.”
Hunter Biden’s former business associate, Devon Archer, right, testified at a closed-door hearing last week.(Fox News)
Additionally, MacCallum cited post-Archer interview reaction from Democrats, who said Archer testified that he and Joe Biden only talked about the weather and other niceties when he was put on speakerphone.
She reported the that interview transcript, however, disclosed that such discussions about trivial things like the weather were “signal enough to be powerful” – citing a particular exchange between Archer and Rep. Daniel Goldman, D-N.Y.
“Of course,” Jordan replied. “The whole idea was [to] get the vice president of the United States on the phone talking with clients and people we’re doing business with. Well, of course, they’re not going to talk about business. That wasn’t what was needed.”
“What was needed is, ‘Oh, I can get my dad on the phone – who happens to be vice president of the most important country in history, who has a lot of influence in D.C – Hey, everyone, do you want to say hello to the vice president?’”
On “The Story,” Jordan reiterated that the purpose of Joe Biden’s momentary interactions were to prove he was quickly accessible to Hunter.
He also cited the now-president’s own recounting of pressuring to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired who had been investigating an energy company for which Hunter sat on the board.
President Biden was allegedly paid $5 million by an executive of the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, where Hunter sat on the board, a confidential human source told the FBI during a June 2020 interview, sources familiar told Fox News Digital in June of this year.
For more Culture, Media, Education, Opinion, and channel coverage, visit foxnews.com/media.
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Hunter Biden used dad Joe as leverage in China business dispute: text message
Clinton Lancaster, an attorney for Lunden Roberts, ripped the 53-year-old Hunter in a 12-page discovery motion filed Thursday in Independence County, Arkansas.Lunden Roberts/Facebook
First son Hunter Biden warned a Chinese business associate in a 2017 text message that dad Joe and his political allies would “make certain … that you will regret not following my direction” while negotiating a six-figure business deal.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden wrote Zhao, the director of Harvest Fund Management, according to Shapley.
“Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” the now-53-year-old went on. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
“I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,” Hunter reiterated to conclude the stunning message.
<img class=”i-amphtml-intrinsic-sizer” role=”presentation” src=”data:;base64,” alt=”” aria-hidden=”true” />First son Hunter Biden used his father as leverage while negotiating a six-figure business deal with a Chinese associate in 2017.Hunter threatened in a text message that his associate would “regret not following my direction” as he was “sitting” in the same room with now-President Biden, according to IRS criminal investigators.AP
An August 2020 search warrant revealed the exchange between Hunter and Zhao, which resulted in $100,000 payment to the 53-year-old’s firm Owasco P.C., the whistleblowers said.
The IRS investigators alleged Justice Department prosecutors denied their requests to look further into Hunter’s texts or obtain their location data — and that DOJ attorneys suggested the first son may have been lying about his father being in the room with him.
Shapley singled out Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf as one of the prosecutors who shut down their probe of a multimillion-dollar deal Hunter, first brother James Biden and their associate Rob Walker cashed in on with China’s CEFC Energy, saying “she did not want to ask questions about ‘dad.’”
IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley (above) and another whistleblower made the stunning admission as part of transcribed interviews that took place over the past two months before the House Ways and Means Committee.CBS Evening News
“When multiple people in the room spoke up and objected that we had to ask, she responded, there’s no specific criminality to that line of questioning,” Shapley said in recounting a Dec. 3, 2020, meeting with US Attorney David Weiss’ team — less than a month after Biden had won the presidential election.
The comment rankled the IRS and FBI agents who were present, all of whom “tried to skirt AUSA Wolf’s direction,” he added.
Hunter and James Biden received $4.8 million from CEFC Energy in 2017 and 2018, The Washington Post confirmed when reviewing the contents of the first son’s abandoned laptop
The whistleblowers alleged Justice Department prosecutors denied their requests to look further into Hunter’s texts or obtain their location data.AP
A May 2017 email about the deal showed the partnership would include a percentage stake of “10 held by H for the big guy,” who has separately been identified as Joe Biden by ex-Hunter associates Tony Bobulinski and James Gilliar.
When quizzed about the “big guy” email, written by Gilliar, Walker told investigators on Dec. 8, 2020: “I think that maybe James was wishful thinking or maybe he was just projecting that, you know, if this was a good relationship and this was something that was going to happen, the VP was never going to run [for president], just protecting that, you know, maybe at some point he would be a piece of it, but he was more just, you know — it looks terrible, but it’s not. I certainly never was thinking at any time the VP was a part of anything we were doing.”
However, according to Shapley, Walker later recalled a CEFC meeting where Joe Biden “stopped in, just said hello to everybody. I don’t even think he drank water. I think Hunter Biden said, ‘I may be trying to start a company or try to do something with these guys and could you?’ And I think he was like, ‘If I’m around,’ and he’d show up.”
In Shapley’s retelling, an FBI agent quizzing Walker asked: “”So you definitely got the feeling that that was orchestrated by Hunter Biden to have like an appearance by his dad at that meeting just to kind of bolster your chances at making a deal work out?”
“Any times when he was in office? Or did you hear Hunter Biden say that he was setting up a meeting with his dad with them while dad was still in office?”
“Yes,” Walker replied again.
“And, inexplicably, the FBI agent changed the subject,” Shapley recalled.
Zhao, who is a Communist Party official, invested in Hunter’s firm Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund Management Co., also known as BHR Partners, which the first son cofounded with other Chinese entities in 2013 — 12 days after he joined then-Vice President Biden for a trip aboard Air Force Two to Beijing.
During the trip, Biden met the firm’s CEO, Jonathan Li, in China’s capital. The 80-year-old president has since written college recommendation letters for Li’s children.
Hunter Biden as recently as 2021 held a 10% stake in BHR Partners, which holds nearly $2.2 billion in assets, but the White House has refused to answer questions about his current holdings.
Business records show Hunter remains invested. His attorney, Chris Clark, maintains he sold the funds.
The whistleblowers told Ways and Means Committee members that their team pressed for felony charges against Hunter Biden for ducking $2.2 million in back taxes, but were ignored by federal prosecutors.
Hunter pleaded guilty Tuesday for having twice failed to pay taxes on roughly $3 million he earned in 2017 and 2018.Ouzounova / Shutterstock
They also said the Department of Justice refused to let Weiss file tax charges against the first son in the District of Columbia and Southern California — going against sworn testimony by Attorney General Merrick Garland that the US attorney had “full authority” to do so.
Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said Thursday that the whistleblowers’ testimony also showed Hunter’s deals came from “Ukraine, Romania and China totaling $17.3 million from 2014 to 2019,” with the first son having “personally received $8.3 million.”
Hunter pleaded guilty Tuesday for having twice failed to pay taxes on roughly $3 million he earned over 2017 and 2018. He has also agreed to a pretrial diversion program to dodge a felony gun conviction for purchasing a firearm while addicted to crack cocaine.
Hunter Biden appeared in person in an Arkansas courtroom Monday for a hearing in the child support case of his unclaimed 4-year-old daughter born out of wedlock.
Lunden Roberts, the mother of 4-year-old Navy Joan Roberts, had reached an agreement with Hunter Biden in 2020 regarding the child’s paternity and child support payments.
The case was reopened when Biden requested adjustments to the child support payments. In December, Roberts’s lawyers filed a motion to have the girl’s last name changed to Biden.
During Monday’s hearing, Biden’s new attorney, Abbe Lowell, said the president’s son is paying $20,000 a month to the plaintiff.
Independence County Circuit Judge Holly Meyer set deadlines for attorneys to submit discovery and begin depositions.
“I expect this case to move,” she said. “So get it done.”
In court, Biden appeared to blankly stare ahead and had no interaction with Roberts.
Hunter Biden must appear in person for an Arkansas paternity case.(Getty images)
Roberts’ family sat behind her along with Garrett Ziegler, whom Biden’s other attorney, Brent Langdon, described during a hearing last week as a potential expert witness in the case involving the contents of Biden’s laptop, which reportedly includes some income-tax records.
The judge on Monday said the ability to redact information is “being abused” by the Biden team.
Langdon cited last week’s Daily Mail article on the case, claiming it included redacted information in violation of a protective order in exposing income-tax records. Meyer disagreed and said what the press comes up with is out of her control, remarking, “I can’t gag the whole world.”
Roberts’ attorney, Clint Lancaster, told the court he has not talked to Daily Mail, explaining to Ziegler the doom and gloom that would come on him if he discussed the case.
From the Biden team, Lancaster requested information on the value of Biden’s art, the president son’s salary/employment for past 5 years, estates/funds from foreign persons/domestic persons/family members, flight/hotel payments, the reason for a promissory note from top Hollywood lawyer, Kevin Morris, and documents on business done with a Chinese firm.
In response, Langdon claimed his team has already turned over more than 490 documents. Biden’s attorney also requested Roberts’ tax returns, information on “fringe benefits” from her employer father, bank statements and Ziegler’s witness statements.
The deadline for discovery was set for May 12 at 5 p.m.
Ziegler’s deposition is to take place on May 22 at Lancaster’s office in Little Rock.
A status conference hearing will be held on May 23 to address discovery requests, any contempt filings, and a potential request to push back trial date. Deposition for both parties and witnesses will take place from June 13-16 at Lancaster’s office.
As of now, the trial start date is still set for July 24.
Last week, the judge ruled that Biden and Roberts must be present for every future hearing in the case.
“The Biden name is now synonymous with being well-educated, successful, financially acute, and politically powerful,” Roberts’ attorneys wrote in the December name-change motion.
In rebuttal, Biden’s attorney demanded “strict proof thereof that such request is in the best interest of the child.”
In a January 2020 order, Meyer declared “with near scientific certainty” that Biden is the father of the girl, referred to in court documents as “Baby Doe,” following a DNA test.
The girl was born in August 2018, and a paternity suit was initially filed in May 2019.
President Biden has refused to acknowledge the granddaughter born out of wedlock. Last Christmas season, first lady Jill Biden hung stockings for six of their grandchildren at the White House, excluding Navy. Those recognized were Naomi, 27, Finnegan, 21, Maisy, 20, Natalie, 17, Robert Hunter Biden II, 15, and little Beau, 1.
Fox News’ Lindsey Reese contributed to this report.
Danielle Wallace is a reporter for Fox News Digital covering politics, crime, police and more. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and on Twitter: @danimwallace.
“I think retaliatory conduct against whistleblowers is unacceptable. They serve a very, very important role in our system,” FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies Thursday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
FBI Director Christopher Wray referred to “malign foreign influence with, potentially, public corruption” during a Senate committee hearing Thursday where participants described Hunter Biden’s alleged misconduct in overseas business dealings in a hypothetical manner.
When asked specifically about the case of President Joe Biden’s son, Wray described it as an “ongoing investigation that I expect our folks to pursue aggressively.”
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, raised the Hunter Biden issue early in the hearing by talking about efforts—reported by FBI whistleblowers—to close down an investigation into the president’s son ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
“In August 2020, the FBI supervisory intelligence analysts opened an assessment. This August 2020 assessment served as a vehicle by which the FBI headquarters team falsely labeled Hunter Biden information as you-know-what disinformation,” Grassley said, referring to partisan Democrats’ claim of Russian interference in the election.
“In October 2020, an avenue of reporting on Hunter Biden was ordered closed,” the Iowa Republican added. “That Hunter Biden information related to potential criminal activity. According to whistleblowers, the reporting was either verified or verifiable, via criminal search warrants. But it was shut down on the basis of it being at risk of disinformation.”
Grassley asked Wray about “politically exposed” individuals involved with allegedly improper or illegal foreign financial transactions.
“I’m not asking about a case here. … If the FBI received information that foreign persons had evidence of improper or unlawful financial payments paid to elected officials or other politically exposed persons, would that pose a national security concern?” Grassley asked the FBI director.
Wray stressed that it would depend on the facts and circumstances of the individual case.
“The kind of conduct you’re describing is typically something we would look at very closely through our efforts at malign foreign influence. It starts to shade into a blend of what we call malign foreign influence with, potentially, public corruption, and it’s something we take seriously,” Wray said.
The hearing came a week after Grassley wrote a letter to Wray and his boss, Attorney General Merrick Garland, about reports from whistleblowers who reported on politicized efforts by the FBI to suppress a probe of Hunter Biden, and falsely characterize anything negative about the president’s son as “Russian disinformation.”
U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss is leading an investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals, conducted both while his father was vice president and afterward. Federal prosecutors are looking at possible charges over taxes and lying to investigators, according to recent news reports.
“What steps should the FBI take to vet or more fully investigate evidence of improper or unlawful financial payment paid to elected officials and other politically exposed persons?” Grassley asked.
Wray replied: “There could be an assessment. There could be an investigation. There could be any number of steps that would be taken to make sure that there is not a national security risk.”
To date, the younger Biden has not been charged with anything.
During the question-and-answer session between Grassley and Wray, both seemed to support protecting whistleblowers.
“Do you agree that any retaliatory conduct against whistleblowers must be disciplined?” the Iowa lawmaker said.
Wray responded: “I think retaliatory conduct against whistleblowers is unacceptable. They serve a very, very important role in our system.”
After information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business activities in Ukraine, Russia, China, and other countries surfaced in 2019, two Senate committee chairmen at the time—Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and Grassley on Judiciary—opened an investigation in 2020.
“In August 2020, Sen. Johnson and I received an unsolicited and unnecessary briefing from the FBI. This briefing reportedly was related to our [Hunter] Biden investigation. In the end, the briefing had nothing to do with it,” Grassley said, adding:
The briefing was instituted after the FBI received pressure from my Democrat colleagues to do just that. The content of that briefing [was] later leaked in order to falsely paint the Grassley-Johnson investigation as advancing you-know-what Russian disinformation.
That briefing was held the very same month the FBI opened the assessment that was used to label Hunter Biden’s information as you-know-what disinformation. Considering the timing of events, the timing draws very serious concern. The FBI’s credibility is on the line.
By contrast, Grassley said, the FBI greenlighted a long investigation into then-President Donald Trump and “Russian collusion” with his presidential campaign based on scant evidence. Yet the bureau closed down a probe of Hunter Biden, he said.
Later in the hearing, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., asked about the two cases.
“Americans look at what they perceive to be, and I think rightly so, a ton of money that was wasted on the Russia collusion investigation. So, do you agree that the allegation of secret collusion between President Trump and Russia was a hoax?”
Wray responded, “I don’t think that’s the terminology I would use.”
Blackburn then asked, “Do you agree that the Hunter Biden laptop was not Russia disinformation?”
Wray replied: “Now you are asking about an ongoing investigation that I expect our folks to pursue aggressively, and I can’t comment on that.”
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The left praises democracy when elected but claims the right will destroy democracy when it loses. Pictured: Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discusses the 2016 election during her 2017 book tour. (Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers, NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Recently, Democrats have been despondent over President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border, and COVID-19 all have lost majority support.
As a result, the left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when it expects to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when it fears losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup.
A cynic might suggest that those on the left praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.
After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old 50-state union?
Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?
The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of former President Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?
Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?
The left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.
Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?
New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration new potentially lifesaving COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.”
The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?
In summer 2020, many local- and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity—if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.
Currently, the Biden administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.
The Biden administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border—in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.
The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.
Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S. citizens, but not millions of U.S. citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 “sanctuary city” jurisdictions. These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.
At various times in our nation’s history—1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63—America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.
In the last five years, we have indeed seen many internal threats to democracy.
Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent. She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump. She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about “Russian collusion.” Clinton urged Biden not to accept the 2020 result if he lost, and herself claimed Trump was not a legitimately elected president.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated laws governing the chain of command. Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander in chief. Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.
Some of the nation’s top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S. Congress, again, mostly with impunity.
All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.
The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.
We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle. But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish, one-day rioters on Jan. 6. Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property—all under the banner of revolutionary justice.
Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America’s institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.
(C)2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
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The Honorable Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Washington D.C.
Dear Representative Adam Kinzinger,
I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.
Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) joined his House Republican colleagues in a press conference urging Democratic leadership to allow a vote on the Born Alive protections. The proposal would protect babies who survive abortion and provide them with the same medical care that any other premature baby would receive. Yesterday, the Democrats blocked the proposed legislation—for the 17th time—from coming before the House for a vote.
Joining the Congressman and House Republican leaders at the press conference this morning was Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and pro-life advocate who has witnessed the devastating realities of these pro-abortion laws. The Illinois legislature is currently debating two abortion bills, similar to the extreme pro-abortion agendas in New York and Virginia.
It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:
Roger Kimball Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion
Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words:
That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.
Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”
There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.
Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.
From left: Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat, and Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
More
Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.
Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.
The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club.
Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively.
Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.
I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years.
Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building.
As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.
Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have beenbranded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.
Let me recommend that you read this letter below from Senator Ron Johnson and his colleagues:
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting information on the unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and those involved in the unrest during the spring and summer of 2020. The senators sent 18 questions to the attorney general on what steps the DOJ has taken to prosecute individuals who committed crimes during both events, and requested a response by June 21.
“Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the senators wrote. “This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.”
The full text of the letter can be found here and below.
June 7, 2021
The Honorable Merrick B. Garland
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Attorney General Garland:
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently dedicating enormous resources and manpower to investigating and prosecuting the criminals who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We fully support and appreciate the efforts by the DOJ and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners to hold those responsible fully accountable.
We join all Americans in the expectation that the DOJ’s response to the events of January 6 will result in rightful criminal prosecutions and accountability. As you are aware, the mission of the DOJ is, among other things, to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans. Today, we write to request information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States.
During the spring and summer of 2020, individuals used peaceful protests across the country to engage in rioting and other crimes that resulted in loss of life, injuries to law enforcement officers, and significant property damage.[1] A federal court house in Portland, Oregon, has been effectively under siege for months.[2] Property destruction stemming from the 2020 social justice protests throughout the country will reportedly result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims.[3]
In June 2020, the DOJ reportedly compiled the following information regarding last year’s unrest:
“One federal officer [was] killed, 147 federal officers [were] injured and 600 local officers [were] injured around the country during the protests, frequently from projectiles.”[4]
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “since the start of the unrest there has been 81 Federal Firearms License burglaries of an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms; 876 reported arsons; 76 explosive incidents; and 46 ATF arrests[.]”[5]
Despite these numerous examples of violence occurring during these protests, it appears that individuals charged with committing crimes at these events may benefit from infrequent prosecutions and minimal, if any, penalties. According to a recent article, “prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”[6]
DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. To date, DOJ has charged 510 individuals stemming from Capitol breach.[7] DOJ maintains and updates a webpage that lists the defendants charged with crimes committed at the Capitol. This database includes information such as the defendant’s name, charge(s), case number, case documents, location of arrest, case status, and informs readers when the entry was last updated.[8] No such database exists for alleged perpetrators of crimes associated with the spring and summer 2020 protests. It is unclear whether any defendants charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol breach have received deferred resolution agreements.
Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning. In order to assist Congress in conducting its oversight work, we respectfully request answers to the following questions by June 21, 2021:
Spring and Summer 2020 Unrest:
Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the unrest in the spring and summer of 2020? If so, how many times and for which locations/riots?
How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020 were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
How many individuals were incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement? What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
How many of these individuals were released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?[9]
How many DOJ prosecutors were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Breach:
Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the January 6, 2021 protests and Capitol breach? If so, how many times and how many additional arrests resulted from law enforcement utilizing geolocation information?
How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
How many individuals are incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement? What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
How many of these individuals have been released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?
How many DOJ prosecutors have been assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed:
Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.
________________
______________________
March 23, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too. Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.
___________________
The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.
Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland) when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have. Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.
Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION
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Dr. Francis schaeffer – from Part 5 of Whatever happened to human race?) Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto – Dr. Francis Schaeffer Lecture
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Dr. Francis Schaeffer – 1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaeffer
http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.
“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”
Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.
The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.
“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”
This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”
That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.
The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.
I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.
On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.
Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.
As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.
Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.
He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.
“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”
“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.
“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.
The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”
And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on.
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]
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I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
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E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
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The Biden “brand” provided “signals, and those signals are basically used as currency” for advancing Hunter Biden’s business interests, according to his former business partner, Devon Archer. Pictured: Archer arrives for closed-door testimony with the House Oversight Committee at the O’Neill House Office Building on July 31, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Republicans asked Archer if President Joe Biden was involved in business dealings with his son during his time as vice president. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
A U.S. vice president, a Russian oligarch’s widow, and a Greek Orthodox priest walk into a cafe.
That’s not the opening line of a joke; it’s part of the story told from the transcript of Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, in a closed-door interview with members and counsel of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
The transcript is 141 pages and covers much of his answers previously reported about what Archer said of the “brand” that then-Vice President Joe Biden lent to son Hunter’s various business ventures.
Here are some key takeaways from the transcript.
1. ‘Signals Are Basically Used as Currency’
Archer said at several points in the testimony that the Biden “brand” was sending “signals” to business partners.
“There are particular, you know, objectives that Burisma was trying to accomplish,” Archer said. “And a lot of it’s about opening doors, you know, globally in D.C. And I think that, you know, that was the, you know—and then obviously having those doors opened, you know, sent the right signals, you know, for Burisma to, you know, carry on its business and be successful.”
At one point, Biden defender Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., asked Archer: “The scope of what he [Hunter Biden] can and cannot do and that he cannot intervene directly with domestic policymakers and needs to abide by FARA [the Foreign Agents Registration Act] and any other U.S. laws in the strictest sense across the board. Was that your understanding of both his approach and Burisma’s understanding, as well?”
Archer replied: “The first part of the statement, yes, I think Burisma was constantly looking for more, and it kind of speaks a little bit to that other email that we used as an exhibit earlier where it’s, like, we’re going to use my dad’s thing and take credit for it. There was an element that he was always trying to avoid that but at the same time trying to prove value. So, it was this element of, like, signals.”
At another point in the interview, the committee’s counsel pressed him on how much influence Hunter Biden had on federal policy.
“I have no basis to understand what his father and his conversations were about policy in Ukraine,” Archer said. “But, as you can see, that seems pretty familiar, that, you know, he can’t influence it but take credit for it. I mean, that was—it’s literally the back and forth between the last exhibit and this exhibit. That’s what goes on. People send signals, and those signals are basically used as currency.”
2. ‘The Brand’
Archer routinely said that Joe Biden was “the brand” that allowed Hunter Biden to haul in investors.
Jacob Greenberg, the oversight committee’s majority counsel, asked, “You keep saying ‘the brand,’ but by ‘brand,’ you mean the Biden family, correct?”
“Correct,” Archer said.
Later, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., interjected, “When you say ‘Biden family’—sorry to cut in here—I just want to get a clarification. You aren’t talking about Dr. Jill [Biden] or anybody else? You’re talking about Joe Biden. Is that fair to say?”
Archer replied, “Yeah, that’s fair to say.”
He followed with, “Listen, I think it’s—I don’t think about it as, you know, Joe directly, but it’s fair. That’s fair to say. Obviously, that brought the most value to the brand.”
3. Burisma Survival and ‘Intimidation’
Archer told the committee that Burisma likely wouldn’t survive without the Biden brand.
“My only thought is that I think Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn’t have the brand attached to it,” Archer said. “That’s my, like, only honest opinion. But I have no basis for any—never heard any conversations.”
According to an FBI form, FD-1023, Burisma executives told a confidential informant they paid a $5 million bribe to the then-vice president and another $5 million to Hunter Biden.
Goldman, the New York congressman and staunch Biden ally, followed with: “But that’s different than Joe Biden’s action.”
Archer said, “Right.”
Goldman said, “You’re just talking about that Hunter was on the board.”
Archer replied, “Right. And I think that’s why it [Burisma] was able to survive for as long as it did.”
Goldman asked, “Because of additional capital or—”
Archer corrected him, “Just because of the brand.”
Goldman seemed to become snippy, replying, “Well, I don’t understand. How does that have an impact?”
Archer told the New York Democrat, “Well, the capabilities to navigate D.C. that they were able to, you know, basically be in the news cycle. And I think that preserved them from a, you know, from a longevity standpoint. That’s like my honest—that’s like really what I—that’s like how I think holistically.”
Goldman asked, “But how would that work?”
Archer answered, “Because people would be intimidated to mess with them.”
Goldman asked, “In what way?”
Archer answered, “Legally.”
As far as a legal matter, in 2018, Biden boasted during a speech that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine unless the government fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma at the time. Biden has argued that Shokin was a corrupt prosecutor.
The counsel asked about a dinner at the Four Seasons with Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma.
During this meeting, at a time when the company was under investigation by Shokin, they asked Hunter Biden to make phone calls.
“The request was I think they were getting pressure and they requested Hunter, you know, help them with some of that pressure,” Archer said.
“What pressure?” the majority counsel asked.
“Government pressure on their—you know, government pressure from Ukrainian government investigations into Mykola, etc.,” Archer said. “But it was not—it wasn’t like a specific—not a specific request. It was just we were sitting there at the Four Seasons having, you know, coffee and there was—there was Mykola, there was one of the managers for the Four Seasons who managed that property, Vadym.”
Archer said that Shokin wasn’t the only concern, as the company was facing problems with Britain, the United States, and Mexico.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked, “The request from Mr. Mykola Zlochevsky and Vadym to Mr. Biden and/or if you said it was to you, the request for help from whom to deal with what pressure?”
Archer answered there wasn’t a specific “the big guy can help” reference.
Joe Biden has become known as “the big guy” in several Hunter Biden communications.
“The request—you know, basically the request is like, can D.C. help? But there were not—you know, I’m not going to—there were not—it wasn’t like—there weren’t specific, you know, can the big guy help? It was—it’s always this amorphous, can we get help in D.C.?”
Biggs later asked, “Why do you think they were asking Hunter Biden for D.C. help?”
Archer answered, “Well, I mean, he was a lobbyist and an expert and obviously he carried, you know, a very powerful name. So, I think it was—that’s what they were asking for.”
5. Dinner Guest Joe Biden and Money Wires
Then-Vice President Biden attended dinners with Hunter Biden’s foreign business partners who wired money to various Biden family-associated companies, according to Archer.
The committee’s majority counsel asked about a spring 2014 dinner at Cafe Milano in Washington.
Archer named individuals present, which included Yelena Baturina, a billionaire and the widow of former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
“And so, this dinner takes place in spring of 2014, approximately. But then do you recall getting a wire on February 14th of 2014 from Yelena Baturina for $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton?” the majority counsel asked.
Archer clarified that it was to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, one of his business operations with Hunter Biden.
“Yes. And why I remember that is from the—from other testimony. Yes.”
The majority counsel also noted a wire transfer with Rosemont Seneca and Kenes Rakishev, a businessman associated with the Malta company Novitas Holdings, PTE Ltd.
“Why did Rosemont Seneca Bohai receive this $142,000 payment from Rakishev?” the counsel asked.
Archer replied, “It was for a car.”
The counsel followed, “For whose car?”
Archer said, “For Hunter’s car.”
The counsel asked, “Was this a Porsche?”
Archer wasn’t sure.
“It gets a little foggy here. I believe it was a Fisker first and then a Porsche. But it was—yes, it … for an expensive car, yes.”
He was also asked about another dinner at Cafe Milano the following year in spring 2015 that Joe Biden attended with Hunter Biden business associates, as well as with a Greek Orthodox priest.
“What did Joe do at that dinner? Did he have dinner? How long was he there?” the counsel asked.
Archer answered, “He had dinner. And there was—on that one, I believe the first one was, like, a birthday dinner, and then the second was—I think we were supposed to talk about the World Food Programme. So there was some talk about that.”
6. Speakerphone Meetings
Archer said that Hunter Biden “would sometimes make it apparent that he spoke to his dad, and sometimes he put him on speaker.”
“If I were to just call my dad right now and put him on speakerphone and we’re in a professional business meeting here, would that be odd to you?” the majority counsel asked.
“That would be odd, if you called your dad right now,” Archer said.
After additional questions, Archer explained about the calls, “That is a little odd. I mean, it’s not odd—I mean, it’s quite obvious what we’re talking around.”
The counsel asked, “You are talking around it, and so I’d like to get out, what are we talking about here?”
“At the end of the day, part of what was delivered is the brand. I mean, it’s like anything, you know, if you’re Jamie Dimon’s son or any CEO,” Archer said. “You know, I think that that’s what we’re talking about, is that there was brand being delivered along with other capabilities and reach … I think ‘brand’ is the best way to describe it.”
Archer went on to note that business associates in the meeting were impressed that the then-vice president joined by speaker phone.
“I think everybody remains, you know, cool and calm like it was, you know—and then probably called their friends and family and said that they spoke to him,” Archer said. “But, you know, the reaction—I don’t have any specifics of, like, people jumping up and giving high-fives, but I think it was, you know, a signal that, you know, they respected and thought it was of value.”
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Hunter Biden used dad Joe as leverage in China business dispute: text message
Clinton Lancaster, an attorney for Lunden Roberts, ripped the 53-year-old Hunter in a 12-page discovery motion filed Thursday in Independence County, Arkansas.Lunden Roberts/Facebook
First son Hunter Biden warned a Chinese business associate in a 2017 text message that dad Joe and his political allies would “make certain … that you will regret not following my direction” while negotiating a six-figure business deal.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden wrote Zhao, the director of Harvest Fund Management, according to Shapley.
“Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” the now-53-year-old went on. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
“I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,” Hunter reiterated to conclude the stunning message.
<img class=”i-amphtml-intrinsic-sizer” role=”presentation” src=”data:;base64,” alt=”” aria-hidden=”true” />First son Hunter Biden used his father as leverage while negotiating a six-figure business deal with a Chinese associate in 2017.Hunter threatened in a text message that his associate would “regret not following my direction” as he was “sitting” in the same room with now-President Biden, according to IRS criminal investigators.AP
An August 2020 search warrant revealed the exchange between Hunter and Zhao, which resulted in $100,000 payment to the 53-year-old’s firm Owasco P.C., the whistleblowers said.
The IRS investigators alleged Justice Department prosecutors denied their requests to look further into Hunter’s texts or obtain their location data — and that DOJ attorneys suggested the first son may have been lying about his father being in the room with him.
Shapley singled out Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf as one of the prosecutors who shut down their probe of a multimillion-dollar deal Hunter, first brother James Biden and their associate Rob Walker cashed in on with China’s CEFC Energy, saying “she did not want to ask questions about ‘dad.’”
IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley (above) and another whistleblower made the stunning admission as part of transcribed interviews that took place over the past two months before the House Ways and Means Committee.CBS Evening News
“When multiple people in the room spoke up and objected that we had to ask, she responded, there’s no specific criminality to that line of questioning,” Shapley said in recounting a Dec. 3, 2020, meeting with US Attorney David Weiss’ team — less than a month after Biden had won the presidential election.
The comment rankled the IRS and FBI agents who were present, all of whom “tried to skirt AUSA Wolf’s direction,” he added.
Hunter and James Biden received $4.8 million from CEFC Energy in 2017 and 2018, The Washington Post confirmed when reviewing the contents of the first son’s abandoned laptop
The whistleblowers alleged Justice Department prosecutors denied their requests to look further into Hunter’s texts or obtain their location data.AP
A May 2017 email about the deal showed the partnership would include a percentage stake of “10 held by H for the big guy,” who has separately been identified as Joe Biden by ex-Hunter associates Tony Bobulinski and James Gilliar.
When quizzed about the “big guy” email, written by Gilliar, Walker told investigators on Dec. 8, 2020: “I think that maybe James was wishful thinking or maybe he was just projecting that, you know, if this was a good relationship and this was something that was going to happen, the VP was never going to run [for president], just protecting that, you know, maybe at some point he would be a piece of it, but he was more just, you know — it looks terrible, but it’s not. I certainly never was thinking at any time the VP was a part of anything we were doing.”
However, according to Shapley, Walker later recalled a CEFC meeting where Joe Biden “stopped in, just said hello to everybody. I don’t even think he drank water. I think Hunter Biden said, ‘I may be trying to start a company or try to do something with these guys and could you?’ And I think he was like, ‘If I’m around,’ and he’d show up.”
In Shapley’s retelling, an FBI agent quizzing Walker asked: “”So you definitely got the feeling that that was orchestrated by Hunter Biden to have like an appearance by his dad at that meeting just to kind of bolster your chances at making a deal work out?”
“Any times when he was in office? Or did you hear Hunter Biden say that he was setting up a meeting with his dad with them while dad was still in office?”
“Yes,” Walker replied again.
“And, inexplicably, the FBI agent changed the subject,” Shapley recalled.
Zhao, who is a Communist Party official, invested in Hunter’s firm Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund Management Co., also known as BHR Partners, which the first son cofounded with other Chinese entities in 2013 — 12 days after he joined then-Vice President Biden for a trip aboard Air Force Two to Beijing.
During the trip, Biden met the firm’s CEO, Jonathan Li, in China’s capital. The 80-year-old president has since written college recommendation letters for Li’s children.
Hunter Biden as recently as 2021 held a 10% stake in BHR Partners, which holds nearly $2.2 billion in assets, but the White House has refused to answer questions about his current holdings.
Business records show Hunter remains invested. His attorney, Chris Clark, maintains he sold the funds.
The whistleblowers told Ways and Means Committee members that their team pressed for felony charges against Hunter Biden for ducking $2.2 million in back taxes, but were ignored by federal prosecutors.
Hunter pleaded guilty Tuesday for having twice failed to pay taxes on roughly $3 million he earned in 2017 and 2018.Ouzounova / Shutterstock
They also said the Department of Justice refused to let Weiss file tax charges against the first son in the District of Columbia and Southern California — going against sworn testimony by Attorney General Merrick Garland that the US attorney had “full authority” to do so.
Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said Thursday that the whistleblowers’ testimony also showed Hunter’s deals came from “Ukraine, Romania and China totaling $17.3 million from 2014 to 2019,” with the first son having “personally received $8.3 million.”
Hunter pleaded guilty Tuesday for having twice failed to pay taxes on roughly $3 million he earned over 2017 and 2018. He has also agreed to a pretrial diversion program to dodge a felony gun conviction for purchasing a firearm while addicted to crack cocaine.
Hunter Biden appeared in person in an Arkansas courtroom Monday for a hearing in the child support case of his unclaimed 4-year-old daughter born out of wedlock.
Lunden Roberts, the mother of 4-year-old Navy Joan Roberts, had reached an agreement with Hunter Biden in 2020 regarding the child’s paternity and child support payments.
The case was reopened when Biden requested adjustments to the child support payments. In December, Roberts’s lawyers filed a motion to have the girl’s last name changed to Biden.
During Monday’s hearing, Biden’s new attorney, Abbe Lowell, said the president’s son is paying $20,000 a month to the plaintiff.
Independence County Circuit Judge Holly Meyer set deadlines for attorneys to submit discovery and begin depositions.
“I expect this case to move,” she said. “So get it done.”
In court, Biden appeared to blankly stare ahead and had no interaction with Roberts.
Hunter Biden must appear in person for an Arkansas paternity case.(Getty images)
Roberts’ family sat behind her along with Garrett Ziegler, whom Biden’s other attorney, Brent Langdon, described during a hearing last week as a potential expert witness in the case involving the contents of Biden’s laptop, which reportedly includes some income-tax records.
The judge on Monday said the ability to redact information is “being abused” by the Biden team.
Langdon cited last week’s Daily Mail article on the case, claiming it included redacted information in violation of a protective order in exposing income-tax records. Meyer disagreed and said what the press comes up with is out of her control, remarking, “I can’t gag the whole world.”
Roberts’ attorney, Clint Lancaster, told the court he has not talked to Daily Mail, explaining to Ziegler the doom and gloom that would come on him if he discussed the case.
From the Biden team, Lancaster requested information on the value of Biden’s art, the president son’s salary/employment for past 5 years, estates/funds from foreign persons/domestic persons/family members, flight/hotel payments, the reason for a promissory note from top Hollywood lawyer, Kevin Morris, and documents on business done with a Chinese firm.
In response, Langdon claimed his team has already turned over more than 490 documents. Biden’s attorney also requested Roberts’ tax returns, information on “fringe benefits” from her employer father, bank statements and Ziegler’s witness statements.
The deadline for discovery was set for May 12 at 5 p.m.
Ziegler’s deposition is to take place on May 22 at Lancaster’s office in Little Rock.
A status conference hearing will be held on May 23 to address discovery requests, any contempt filings, and a potential request to push back trial date. Deposition for both parties and witnesses will take place from June 13-16 at Lancaster’s office.
As of now, the trial start date is still set for July 24.
Last week, the judge ruled that Biden and Roberts must be present for every future hearing in the case.
“The Biden name is now synonymous with being well-educated, successful, financially acute, and politically powerful,” Roberts’ attorneys wrote in the December name-change motion.
In rebuttal, Biden’s attorney demanded “strict proof thereof that such request is in the best interest of the child.”
In a January 2020 order, Meyer declared “with near scientific certainty” that Biden is the father of the girl, referred to in court documents as “Baby Doe,” following a DNA test.
The girl was born in August 2018, and a paternity suit was initially filed in May 2019.
President Biden has refused to acknowledge the granddaughter born out of wedlock. Last Christmas season, first lady Jill Biden hung stockings for six of their grandchildren at the White House, excluding Navy. Those recognized were Naomi, 27, Finnegan, 21, Maisy, 20, Natalie, 17, Robert Hunter Biden II, 15, and little Beau, 1.
Fox News’ Lindsey Reese contributed to this report.
Danielle Wallace is a reporter for Fox News Digital covering politics, crime, police and more. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and on Twitter: @danimwallace.
“I think retaliatory conduct against whistleblowers is unacceptable. They serve a very, very important role in our system,” FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies Thursday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
FBI Director Christopher Wray referred to “malign foreign influence with, potentially, public corruption” during a Senate committee hearing Thursday where participants described Hunter Biden’s alleged misconduct in overseas business dealings in a hypothetical manner.
When asked specifically about the case of President Joe Biden’s son, Wray described it as an “ongoing investigation that I expect our folks to pursue aggressively.”
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, raised the Hunter Biden issue early in the hearing by talking about efforts—reported by FBI whistleblowers—to close down an investigation into the president’s son ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
“In August 2020, the FBI supervisory intelligence analysts opened an assessment. This August 2020 assessment served as a vehicle by which the FBI headquarters team falsely labeled Hunter Biden information as you-know-what disinformation,” Grassley said, referring to partisan Democrats’ claim of Russian interference in the election.
“In October 2020, an avenue of reporting on Hunter Biden was ordered closed,” the Iowa Republican added. “That Hunter Biden information related to potential criminal activity. According to whistleblowers, the reporting was either verified or verifiable, via criminal search warrants. But it was shut down on the basis of it being at risk of disinformation.”
Grassley asked Wray about “politically exposed” individuals involved with allegedly improper or illegal foreign financial transactions.
“I’m not asking about a case here. … If the FBI received information that foreign persons had evidence of improper or unlawful financial payments paid to elected officials or other politically exposed persons, would that pose a national security concern?” Grassley asked the FBI director.
Wray stressed that it would depend on the facts and circumstances of the individual case.
“The kind of conduct you’re describing is typically something we would look at very closely through our efforts at malign foreign influence. It starts to shade into a blend of what we call malign foreign influence with, potentially, public corruption, and it’s something we take seriously,” Wray said.
The hearing came a week after Grassley wrote a letter to Wray and his boss, Attorney General Merrick Garland, about reports from whistleblowers who reported on politicized efforts by the FBI to suppress a probe of Hunter Biden, and falsely characterize anything negative about the president’s son as “Russian disinformation.”
U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss is leading an investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals, conducted both while his father was vice president and afterward. Federal prosecutors are looking at possible charges over taxes and lying to investigators, according to recent news reports.
“What steps should the FBI take to vet or more fully investigate evidence of improper or unlawful financial payment paid to elected officials and other politically exposed persons?” Grassley asked.
Wray replied: “There could be an assessment. There could be an investigation. There could be any number of steps that would be taken to make sure that there is not a national security risk.”
To date, the younger Biden has not been charged with anything.
During the question-and-answer session between Grassley and Wray, both seemed to support protecting whistleblowers.
“Do you agree that any retaliatory conduct against whistleblowers must be disciplined?” the Iowa lawmaker said.
Wray responded: “I think retaliatory conduct against whistleblowers is unacceptable. They serve a very, very important role in our system.”
After information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business activities in Ukraine, Russia, China, and other countries surfaced in 2019, two Senate committee chairmen at the time—Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and Grassley on Judiciary—opened an investigation in 2020.
“In August 2020, Sen. Johnson and I received an unsolicited and unnecessary briefing from the FBI. This briefing reportedly was related to our [Hunter] Biden investigation. In the end, the briefing had nothing to do with it,” Grassley said, adding:
The briefing was instituted after the FBI received pressure from my Democrat colleagues to do just that. The content of that briefing [was] later leaked in order to falsely paint the Grassley-Johnson investigation as advancing you-know-what Russian disinformation.
That briefing was held the very same month the FBI opened the assessment that was used to label Hunter Biden’s information as you-know-what disinformation. Considering the timing of events, the timing draws very serious concern. The FBI’s credibility is on the line.
By contrast, Grassley said, the FBI greenlighted a long investigation into then-President Donald Trump and “Russian collusion” with his presidential campaign based on scant evidence. Yet the bureau closed down a probe of Hunter Biden, he said.
Later in the hearing, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., asked about the two cases.
“Americans look at what they perceive to be, and I think rightly so, a ton of money that was wasted on the Russia collusion investigation. So, do you agree that the allegation of secret collusion between President Trump and Russia was a hoax?”
Wray responded, “I don’t think that’s the terminology I would use.”
Blackburn then asked, “Do you agree that the Hunter Biden laptop was not Russia disinformation?”
Wray replied: “Now you are asking about an ongoing investigation that I expect our folks to pursue aggressively, and I can’t comment on that.”
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The left praises democracy when elected but claims the right will destroy democracy when it loses. Pictured: Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton discusses the 2016 election during her 2017 book tour. (Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers, NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Recently, Democrats have been despondent over President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border, and COVID-19 all have lost majority support.
As a result, the left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when it expects to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when it fears losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup.
A cynic might suggest that those on the left praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.
After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old 50-state union?
Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?
The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of former President Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?
Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?
The left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.
Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?
New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration new potentially lifesaving COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.”
The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?
In summer 2020, many local- and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity—if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.
Currently, the Biden administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.
The Biden administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border—in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.
The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.
Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S. citizens, but not millions of U.S. citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 “sanctuary city” jurisdictions. These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.
At various times in our nation’s history—1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63—America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.
In the last five years, we have indeed seen many internal threats to democracy.
Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent. She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump. She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about “Russian collusion.” Clinton urged Biden not to accept the 2020 result if he lost, and herself claimed Trump was not a legitimately elected president.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated laws governing the chain of command. Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander in chief. Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.
Some of the nation’s top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S. Congress, again, mostly with impunity.
All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.
The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.
We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle. But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish, one-day rioters on Jan. 6. Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property—all under the banner of revolutionary justice.
Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America’s institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.
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The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
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The Honorable Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Washington D.C.
Dear Representative Adam Kinzinger,
I noticed that you are a pro-life representative that has a long record of standing up for unborn babies! It was in the 1970’s when I was first introduced to the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I wanted to commend their writings and films to you.
Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) joined his House Republican colleagues in a press conference urging Democratic leadership to allow a vote on the Born Alive protections. The proposal would protect babies who survive abortion and provide them with the same medical care that any other premature baby would receive. Yesterday, the Democrats blocked the proposed legislation—for the 17th time—from coming before the House for a vote.
Joining the Congressman and House Republican leaders at the press conference this morning was Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and pro-life advocate who has witnessed the devastating realities of these pro-abortion laws. The Illinois legislature is currently debating two abortion bills, similar to the extreme pro-abortion agendas in New York and Virginia.
It seems you have a grudge against President Trump while our freedoms under President Biden are being taken away. I recommend to you the article below:
Roger Kimball Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion
Mr. Kimball concludes his article with these words:
That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.
Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”
There were a few Republicans Thursday who surprised observers when they voted in support of holding former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
Prior to the vote, four Republicans were considered a lock to approve the criminal referral, according to Capitol Hill sources: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.
Cheney and Kinzinger are on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and have for months stood alone as the only two House Republicans willing to speak out against former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about the 2020 election. They were the only two House Republicans to vote for the formation of the select committee on June 30.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formed the select committee after Republicans rejected a bipartisan commission that would have been evenly split between five Democrats and five Republicans. Only 35 Republicans voted for that measure when itpassed the House of Representatives, and it was defeated by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.
From left: Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat, and Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
More
Upton has served in the House for more than three decades, since 1987, and will face a primary challenge next year because of his willingness to stand up to Trump.
Gonzalez is retiring from Congress next year, after only four years in the House. “While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” Gonzalez said in September when heannounced he would not seek another term.
The remaining five Republicans included three who voted for impeachment — Peter Meijer of Michigan, John Katko of New York and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington — and two House Republicans who did not vote to impeach Trump: Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club.
Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively.
Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.
I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years.
Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building.
As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.
Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have beenbranded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.
Let me recommend that you read this letter below from Senator Ron Johnson and his colleagues:
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), along with senators Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting information on the unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and those involved in the unrest during the spring and summer of 2020. The senators sent 18 questions to the attorney general on what steps the DOJ has taken to prosecute individuals who committed crimes during both events, and requested a response by June 21.
“Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the senators wrote. “This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning.”
The full text of the letter can be found here and below.
June 7, 2021
The Honorable Merrick B. Garland
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Attorney General Garland:
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently dedicating enormous resources and manpower to investigating and prosecuting the criminals who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We fully support and appreciate the efforts by the DOJ and its federal, state and local law enforcement partners to hold those responsible fully accountable.
We join all Americans in the expectation that the DOJ’s response to the events of January 6 will result in rightful criminal prosecutions and accountability. As you are aware, the mission of the DOJ is, among other things, to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans. Today, we write to request information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the United States.
During the spring and summer of 2020, individuals used peaceful protests across the country to engage in rioting and other crimes that resulted in loss of life, injuries to law enforcement officers, and significant property damage.[1] A federal court house in Portland, Oregon, has been effectively under siege for months.[2] Property destruction stemming from the 2020 social justice protests throughout the country will reportedly result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims.[3]
In June 2020, the DOJ reportedly compiled the following information regarding last year’s unrest:
“One federal officer [was] killed, 147 federal officers [were] injured and 600 local officers [were] injured around the country during the protests, frequently from projectiles.”[4]
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), “since the start of the unrest there has been 81 Federal Firearms License burglaries of an estimated loss of 1,116 firearms; 876 reported arsons; 76 explosive incidents; and 46 ATF arrests[.]”[5]
Despite these numerous examples of violence occurring during these protests, it appears that individuals charged with committing crimes at these events may benefit from infrequent prosecutions and minimal, if any, penalties. According to a recent article, “prosecutors have approved deals in at least half a dozen federal felony cases arising from clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Oregon last summer. The arrangements — known as deferred resolution agreements — will leave the defendants with a clean criminal record if they stay out of trouble for a period of time and complete a modest amount of community service, according to defense attorneys and court records.”[6]
DOJ’s apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. To date, DOJ has charged 510 individuals stemming from Capitol breach.[7] DOJ maintains and updates a webpage that lists the defendants charged with crimes committed at the Capitol. This database includes information such as the defendant’s name, charge(s), case number, case documents, location of arrest, case status, and informs readers when the entry was last updated.[8] No such database exists for alleged perpetrators of crimes associated with the spring and summer 2020 protests. It is unclear whether any defendants charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol breach have received deferred resolution agreements.
Americans have the constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. This constitutional right should be cherished and protected. Violence, property damage, and vandalism of any kind should not be tolerated and individuals that break the law should be prosecuted. However, the potential unequal administration of justice with respect to certain protestors is particularly concerning. In order to assist Congress in conducting its oversight work, we respectfully request answers to the following questions by June 21, 2021:
Spring and Summer 2020 Unrest:
Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the unrest in the spring and summer of 2020? If so, how many times and for which locations/riots?
How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020 were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
How many individuals were incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement? What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
How many of these individuals were released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?[9]
How many DOJ prosecutors were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with protests in the spring and summer of 2020?
January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Breach:
Did federal law enforcement utilize geolocation data from defendants’ cell phones to track protestors associated with the January 6, 2021 protests and Capitol breach? If so, how many times and how many additional arrests resulted from law enforcement utilizing geolocation information?
How many individuals who may have committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach were arrested by law enforcement using pre-dawn raids and SWAT teams?
How many individuals are incarcerated for allegedly committing crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
How many of these individuals are or were placed in solitary confinement? What was the average amount of consecutive days such individuals were in solitary confinement?
How many of these individuals have been released on bail?
How many of these individuals have been released on their own recognizance or without being required to post bond?
How many of these individuals were offered deferred resolution agreements?
How many DOJ prosecutors have been assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
How many FBI personnel were assigned to work on cases involving defendants who allegedly committed crimes associated with the Capitol breach?
I want to recommend to you a video on YOU TUBE that runs 28 minutes and 39 seconds by Francis Schaeffer entitled because it discusses the founding of our nation and what the FOUNDERS believed:
Edith Schaeffer with her husband, Francis Schaeffer, in 1970 in Switzerland, where they founded L’Abri, a Christian commune.
________________
______________________
March 23, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too. Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.
___________________
The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.
Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland) when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have. Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.
Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION
_____________________________________
Dr. Francis schaeffer – from Part 5 of Whatever happened to human race?) Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto – Dr. Francis Schaeffer Lecture
Francis Schaeffer – A 700 Club Special! ~ Francis Schaeffer 1982
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – 1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaeffer
http://www.NewsandOpinion.com | A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.
“But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”
Hearing the story, I wished it could be repeated to the justices of the Supreme Court, in the hope that at least five of them might act on this 9-year-old’s clarity of thought and vision.
The boy’s spontaneous insistence on the primacy of life also reminded me of a powerful pro-life speaker and writer who, many years ago, helped me become a pro-lifer. He was a preacher, a black preacher. He said: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.
“That,” he continued, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore out of your right to be concerned.”
This passionate reverend used to warn: “Don’t let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn’t a human being. That’s how the whites dehumanized us … The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify what they wanted to do — and not even feel they’d done anything wrong.”
That preacher was Jesse Jackson. Later, he decided to run for the presidency — and it was a credible campaign that many found inspiring in its focus on what still had to be done on civil rights. But Jackson had by now become “pro-choice” — much to the appreciation of most of those in the liberal base.
The last time I saw Jackson was years later, on a train from Washington to New York. I told him of a man nominated, but not yet confirmed, to a seat on a federal circuit court of appeals. This candidate was a strong supporter of capital punishment — which both the Rev. Jackson and I oppose, since it involves the irreversible taking of a human life by the state.
I asked Jackson if he would hold a press conference in Washington, criticizing the nomination, and he said he would. The reverend was true to his word; the press conference took place; but that nominee was confirmed to the federal circuit court. However, I appreciated Jackson’s effort.
On that train, I also told Jackson that I’d been quoting — in articles, and in talks with various groups — from his compelling pro-life statements. I asked him if he’d had any second thoughts on his reversal of those views.
Usually quick to respond to any challenge that he is not consistent in his positions, Jackson paused, and seemed somewhat disquieted at my question. Then he said to me, “I’ll get back to you on that.” I still patiently await what he has to say.
As time goes on, my deepening concern with the consequences of abortion is that its validation by the Supreme Court, as a constitutional practice, helps support the convictions of those who, in other controversies — euthanasia, assisted suicide and the “futility doctrine” by certain hospital ethics committees — believe that there are lives not worth continuing.
Around the time of my conversation with Jackson on the train, I attended a conference on euthanasia at Clark College in Worcester, Mass. There, I met Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society, and already known internationally as a key proponent of the “death with dignity” movement.
He told me that for some years in this country, he had considerable difficulty getting his views about assisted suicide and, as he sees it, compassionate euthanasia into the American press.
“But then,” Humphry told me, “a wonderful thing happened. It opened all the doors for me.”
“What was that wonderful thing?” I asked.
“Roe v. Wade,” he answered.
The devaluing of human life — as the 9-year-old at the dinner table put it more vividly — did not end with making abortion legal, and therefore, to some people, moral. The word “baby” does not appear in Roe v. Wade — let alone the word “killing.”
And so, the termination of “lives not worth living” goes on.
______________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
Sometimes you can see evidences in someone’s life of how content they really are. I saw something like that on 2-8-13 when I confronted a blogger that goes by the name “AngryOldWoman” on the Arkansas Times Blog. See below. Leadership Crisis in America Published on Jul 11, 2012 Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s […]
In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
(unless, of course, you want much lower living standards).giant Ponzi scheme operated by the government. Benefits that are paid to existing retirees come from the current taxes from those working today and borrowing. …But now, Americans have fewer children, and life expectancies are growing rapidly. …There is no easy way out. Future Social Security benefits will be cut (probably by not fully indexing for inflation), and/or taxes will be greatly and continuously increased until the system collapses.
because there is no incentive to adapt.But while this fallacy is well known in economics, sunk costs are a big deal in the practical world of politics. Nobody wants to waste money, and politicians don’t want to cause waste directly. No member of Congress wants to be publicly responsible for a half-built bridge, especially when they have to tell taxpayers they still have to foot the bill for it. …Congress’s unwillingness to cut the funding of poorly run projects is a significant reason government projects always spend too much. …Politicians are nervous about cutting ongoing projects because they don’t want to leave taxpayers empty-handed, but stomaching sunk costs is worth it. Not only is it economically sound to stop government agencies from bleeding money, but it also sets the precedent that shoddy work will be held accountable. …to save money, sometimes you have to lose money.
(sort of like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer because it feels good when you stop).
Simply stated, modest-sized welfare states are sustainable if more and more new taxpayers enter the system to finance benefits for a burgeoning population of old people.…Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time. …The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old. …The change may take decades, but once it starts, decline (just like growth) spirals exponentially. With fewer births, fewer girls grow up to have children, and if they have smaller families than their parents did — which is happening in dozens of countries — the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff. …according to projections by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, 183 countries and territories — out of 195 — will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100.
Other Asian jurisdictions, however, made the mistake of copying Western nations, meaning entitlement programs that become mathematically impossible when populations pyramids become population cylinders (or even upside-down pyramids!).
But reform also is desperately needed because ofchanging demographics. Simply stated, leaving all the entitlement programs on autopilot is a recipe for a Greek-style fiscal crisis.
And I’ve previously shared some of Eberstadt’s work on the growing dependency crisis in America.
Clinton Lancaster, an attorney for Lunden Roberts, ripped the 53-year-old Hunter in a 12-page discovery motion filed Thursday in Independence County, Arkansas.
The Daily Hatch 